Summary
International Symposium on Nonlinear Theory and its Applications
2005
Session Number:3-1-1
Session:
Number:3-1-1-3
Vehicle platoons formed through self-regularisation
Jonathan A. Rogge, Dirk Aeyels,
pp.683-686
Publication Date:2005/10/18
Online ISSN:2188-5079
Summary:
In this paper we design a novel control strategy for a string of vehicles. The vehicles are coupled at the control level such that each vehicle influences the behavior of another vehicle resulting in self-organization of the vehicle string: through this interaction a cooperative behavior emerges and a platoon is formed. This contrasts with the traditional control where an independent leader vehicle is to be followed by the other vehicles. The coupling structure under consideration is unidirectional-ring coupling. In the unidirectional ring, each vehicle regulates the distance with its immediate forward neighbor to a given constant, and the first vehicle in the platoon keeps its distance to the last vehicle constant. The resulting behavior of the system is a platoon of vehicles moving at a constant velocity with constant distances between each pair of consecutive vehicles. Stability properties of the system are established and the concept of string stability of a platoon is discussed and applied to the proposed interconnection.