Event-Triggered Control with Intermittent Communications over Erasure Channels for Leader-Follower Problems with the Combined-Slip Effect

In this article, we investigate the vehicle path-following problem for a vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V)–enabled leader–follower scenario and propose an integrated control policy for the following vehicle to accurately follow the leader’s path. We propose a control strategy for the follower vehicle to maintain a velocity-dependent distance relative to the leader vehicle while stabilizing its longitudinal and lateral dynamics considering the combined-slip effect and tire force saturation. In light of reducing wireless communication errors and efficient usage of battery power and resources, we propose an intermittent V2V communication in which transmissions are scheduled based on an event-triggered law. An event is triggered and a transmission is scheduled in subsequent sample time if some of the well-defined path-following error functions (relative distance error and lateral error) exceed given tolerance bounds. Considering that the V2V communication channel might be erroneous or a transmission fails due to, e.g., vehicles’ distance or low battery power, we consider data loss in the V2V channel. Our proposed control law consists of two components: a receding horizon feedback controller with state constraints based on a safe operation envelop and a feedforward controller that generates complementary control inputs when the leader’s states are successfully communicated to the follower. To mitigate the effects of data loss on the follower’s path-following performance, we design a remote estimator for the follower to predict the leader’s state using its on-board sensor equipment when an event is triggered but the corresponding state information is not received by the follower due to a packet loss. Incorporating this estimator allows the follower to apply cautionary control inputs knowing that the path-following error had exceeded a tolerance bound. We show that while the feedback controller stabilizes the follower’s dynamics, the feedforward component improves the safety margins and reduces the path-following errors even in the presence of data loss. High-fidelity simulations are performed using CarSim to validate the effectiveness of our proposed control architecture specifically in harsh maneuvers and high-slip scenarios on various road surface conditions.