String Stable and Collision-Safe Model Predictive Platoon Control

Automated vehicle platooning bears high potential to increase traffic efficiency, improve road safety, and reduce fuel consumption. To realize platoons with small inter-vehicle distances, collision safety is the most crucial concern and needs to be considered carefully. Moreover, it is desired to attenuate disturbances along the platoon which is known as string stability. While model predictive control concepts achieve efficient, situation-aware, and safe platooning, establishing string stability properties is difficult. In this work string stability is characterized for a generic feedback setting. A workflow to design an extended time gap spacing policy is proposed for a safety-extended distributed model predictive platooning controller. It provides safe, tightly-packed platoon operation with robust string stability near steady-state even without vehicle-to-vehicle-V2V-communication. Platoon performance is further improved by exploiting V2V-communication. Finally, the resulting closed-loop platoon dynamics are validated in a high-fidelity co-simulation study.