Switching decentralized control of a platoon of vehicles with time-varying heterogeneous delay: A safe and dense spacing policy

In this paper the problem of decentralized switching control of a platoon of vehicles in the presence of heterogeneous time-varying communication and parasitic delays is investigated. A neighbor-based linear decentralized controller using the relative measurements is considered for each vehicle. The communication structure of the platoon is assumed to be time-varying. Therefore, the closed-loop dynamics of the platoon is in the form of switched linear multiple-delay systems. Compared to previous research, the communication structure of the platoon is assumed to be general. A safe and dense spacing policy is used to adjust inter-vehicle distances. The internal stability analysis of the platoon is done by employing Lyapunov-Razumikhin and Lyapunov-Krasovskii theorems. Afterwards, some conditions on control parameters assuring string stability are obtained by introducing a new theorem. Simulation studies are carried out to show the effectiveness of the proposed methods.