String stable integral control design for vehicle platoons with disturbances

This paper presents a control design with integral action for vehicle platoons with disturbances that ensures string stability of the closed-loop system and disturbance rejection. The addition of integral action and a coordinate change allows the development of sufficient smoothness conditions on the closed-loop system to ensure that the closed-loop system using the proposed controller is string stable when subject to time-varying disturbances, while rejecting constant disturbances. In addition, bounds for the tracking error of the platoon configuration are also given. A case study is considered together with a suitable controller structure, which satisfies the required smoothness conditions. Simulation results illustrate the performance of the closed-loop system. (C) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This paper introduces a control design with integral action for vehicle platoons to ensure string stability and disturbance rejection. It also provides bounds for the tracking error of the platoon configuration. Simulation results demonstrate the performance of the proposed closed-loop system.