Robust Longitudinal Control of Multi-Vehicle Systems—A Distributed H-Infinity Method

Abstract

The platooning of automated vehicles has the potential to significantly benefit road traffic. This paper presents a distributed $\text{H}_{\mathrm {\infty }}$ control method for multi-vehicle systems with identical dynamic controllers and rigid formation geometry. After compensating for the powertrain nonlinearity, the node dynamics in a platoon is mathematically described by a multiplicative uncertainty model. The platoon control system is then decomposed into an uncertain part and a diagonal nominal system through linear transformation and eigenvalue decomposition of the information-exchange-topology matrix. Robust stability, string stability, and distance tracking performance of the designed platoons are analyzed theoretically under the decoupled $\text{H}_{\mathrm {\infty }}$ framework. A comparative simulation with non-robust controllers is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of this method.