Cooperative Startup Control for Heterogeneous Vehicle Platoons: A Finite-Time Output Tracking-Based Approach

The connected vehicle (CV) technology has emerged in recent years. This article studies cooperative startup control of heterogeneous CVs in a platoon. First, from the perspective of cooperative tracking of heterogeneous multiagent systems, a hierarchical finite-time control framework is established, which consists of an upper-level interactive observer layer and a lower-level local controller layer. By separating neighboring information interaction from local dynamics control, the proposed framework allows to design upper-level observers and lower-level local controllers separately. Second, by introducing a potential function related to the consensus and observing errors, a distributed finite-time observer is designed for each CV to observe a startup reference trajectory available for only part of the CVs. Third, a distributed local finite-time controller is designed for each CV to track its observed startup reference trajectories. Within the proposed framework, finite-time observing and tracking of the startup reference trajectory are strictly proved to guarantee cooperative startup control. Numerical simulations are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.

Automated summary

This article investigates cooperative startup control of heterogeneous connected vehicles in a platoon. A hierarchical finite-time control framework is established, utilizing distributed observers and controllers to track startup reference trajectories, ensuring effective cooperative startup control. Numerical simulations validate the proposed methods' effectiveness.