Hierarchical Control of Connected Vehicle Platoon by Simultaneously Considering the Vehicle Kinematics and Dynamics

This article develops a hierarchical control strategy for connected vehicle (CV) platoon. To this end, the article first characterizes the communication connectivity between CVs using the predecessor-leader following (PLF) topology. Then, a hierarchical control strategy, consisting of first-level and second-level controllers, is proposed by simultaneously considering the vehicle kinematics and dynamics. In particular, the vehicle kinematic model-based controller is proposed in first-level by incorporating the nonlinear coupling and interaction between the CVs and the heterogeneous communication delays; and the vehicle dynamic model-based adaptive integral sliding-mode controller is designed in second-level according to the vehicle desired states obtained by the first-level controller and external disturbance. In addition, the delay-dependent convergence of the first-level controller and finite-time tracking of the second-level controller are rigorously analyzed, respectively. Further, the infinity-norm method is used to investigate the string stability. Eventually, the performance of the developed hierarchical control strategy is verified by extensive simulations, co-simulations and compared with existing methods.