Hierarchical lane-changing control for vehicle platoons in prescribed performance☆ ☆

This paper proposes a hierarchical control approach to solve the prescribed performance lanechanging control problem for nonlinear vehicle platoons. By incorporating the collision avoidance and comfort assurance conditions specifically tailored for vehicle platoons, the value range of the safe lane-changing completion time (LCCT) can be calculated. Based on which, the longitudinal and lateral reference displacements are determined for the leader vehicle, respectively. Further, to safely achieve the prescribed performance lane changing in the operational layer, a class of more practical performance functions is designed based on the calculated LCCT as the key technology for proposing the neural network longitudinal and lateral control protocols. The developed lane-changing control strategies guarantee that the vehicle platoon can track the obtained reference trajectory while avoiding inter-platoon and intra-platoon collisions. Furthermore, the safe lane-changing maneuver can be achieved within the predefined LCCT with the preset accuracy. Finally, the availability of the proposed hierarchical algorithm is checked through two simulation examples with comparisons. (c) 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.