Nonlinear platoon control of Arduino cars with range-limited sensors

Abstract

This paper investigates the problem of platoon control with sensor range limitation. A nonlinear vehicular platoon model is established, in which the sensing range constraint described by a piecewise nonlinear function is involved. Then a robust nonlinear control design method is proposed based on a disturbance observer and the backstepping technique. The results are obtained in the context of both individual vehicle stability and platoon string stability analysis, which can lead to substantially enhanced platoon control performance with a guaranteed level of attenuation of the disturbance caused by lead vehicle acceleration and wind gust. The effectiveness of the method has been shown by numerical simulations and experiments carried out with Arduino cars.

Keywords:

• vehicle platoon
• limited sensing range
• backstepping
• robust nonlinear control
• lumped disturbance

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Editor and the anonymous reviews for their helpful comments that have significantly improved the quality of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 61273107], [grant number 61174060], [grant number 61304192]; the Dalian Leading Talent Project [grant number 841252], Dalian, China; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant number 3132013334], China.