An adaptive switched control approach to heterogeneous platooning with intervehicle communication losses

The advances in distributed intervehicle communication networks have stimulated a fruitful line of research in cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC). In CACC, individual vehicles, grouped into platoons, must automatically adjust their own speed using on-board sensors and communication with the preceding vehicle so as to maintain a safe intervehicle distance. However, a crucial limitation of the state of the art of this control scheme is that the string stability of the platoon can be proven only when the vehicles in the platoon have identical driveline dynamics and perfect engine performance (homogeneous platoon), and possibly an ideal communication channel. This paper proposes a novel CACC strategy that overcomes the homogeneity assumption and that is able to adapt its action and achieve string stability even for uncertain heterogeneous platoons. Furthermore, in order to handle the inevitable communication losses, we formulate an extended average dwell-time framework and design an adaptive switched control strategy, which activates an augmented CACC or an augmented adaptive cruise control strategy depending on communication reliability. Stability is proven analytically and simulations are conducted to validate the theoretical analysis.