Vehicle platooning with constant spacing strategies and multiple vehicle look ahead information

This study considers the problem of vehicle platooning using multiple vehicle look ahead information while utilising a controller based on the constant spacing policy (CSP). First, string instability is shown with a CSP based controller that utilises position, velocity and acceleration information from 'r' predecessor vehicles in the presence of parasitic lags in actuation. A novel approach using perturbation analysis is employed to show this result, where the spacing errors are states of a spatially discrete system. Then, an upper bound on the allowable parasitic lag is derived when the CSP controller utilises information from the immediate predecessor vehicle and the leading vehicle; for this controller and a given parasitic lag, a design procedure for selection of the controller gain is also given. Numerical simulations of these two results are provided and discussed.