Distributed Formation Control of Homogeneous Vehicle Platoon Considering Vehicle Dynamics

Vehicle dynamics plays a significant role on the formation of a vehicle platoon, especially at high speed condition. This paper proposes a distributed platoon formation framework for homogeneous autonomous vehicles which takes the vehicle dynamics into consideration. The boundaries of vehicle stability are firstly calculated by considering both lateral dynamics and actuator saturation. By combining the stability boundaries with multi-objective flocking (MOF) algorithm, a distributed formation controller is designed, which can form the vehicle platoon with high cruising speed steadily and rapidly. In addition, a low-level tracking controller is proposed to constitute a hierarchical control architecture which can achieve stable and accurate formation of platoon. Simulation results show the proposed platoon formation controller achieves safe, stable and rapid platoon formation than the traditional MOF-based formation controller which does not consider the vehicle dynamics.