Observer-based Control for Vehicle Platooning with a Leader of Varying Velocity

This paper studies the internal stability and string stability of a vehicle platooning with a varying-velocity leader using a multiple-predecessor following strategy via vehicle-to-vehicle communication. Unlike the common case in which the leader’s velocity is constant and different kinds of PID controllers are implemented, in this case, the fact that the leader has a velocity that varies over time, necessitates the design of an observer. First, in order to estimate the position, velocity and acceleration error between the follower and the leader, an observer is designed whose parameters are the entries of a matrix. The matrix format of the observer is later reduced to a specific observer parameter matrix form. This new observer turns out to have a third order integrator dynamics, which is used to generate the parameter conditions to guarantee the string stability. Additionally, instead of a typical PID controller, an observer-based controller is developed which only needs local information. The effectiveness of the proposed observer and controller is demonstrated via an illustrative example.