Observer-based control of vehicle platoons with random network access

Abstract

This paper investigates cooperative control of vehicle platoons, focusing on the effect of medium access control (MAC) protocol and unreliable measurement on acceleration information. A Markov chain is used to describe the randomness in vehicular network access under a MAC protocol; a reduced-order observer is proposed to estimate the relative acceleration of neighboring vehicles. Based on stochastic system techniques, a series of sufficient conditions for the existence of the observer-based controller are given in the form of backward recursive Riccati Difference Equations (RDE). A controller–estimator design algorithm is derived to determine the controller and observer gains with which the disturbance of the preceding vehicle acceleration can be eliminated and string stability and zero steady-state velocity error performance can be guaranteed. Both numerical simulations and experiments with laboratory-scale Arduino cars are given to verify the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed algorithm.