Control of a Heterogeneous Platoon of Vehicles with Actuator Lag, Communication Delay and Switched Interaction Topology: Constant Spacing and Constant Time Headway Policies

This paper investigates the control problem of a heterogonous vehicular platoon with time-varying interaction topology, communication delay and actuator’s lag. For each vehicle, a neighbor based linear control law using relative position and relative velocity between vehicles is considered. Two new approaches based on Lyapunov-Razumikhin theorem are presented to perform the internal stability analysis of the resultant switched linear time delay system. It is shown that the closed-loop dynamic is globally asymptotically stable under arbitrary switching. It means that the heterogeneous platoon of vehicles is internal stable under switching action. In continuance of paper, a new theorem is presented to obtain conditions on controller gains satisfying the string stability of heterogeneous platoon. Simulation results are provided to show the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.