We consider the class of interconnected non-linear dynamic systems suggested by the problem of longitudinal and lateral control of a platoon of vehicles on automated highways. After describing the physical setting from which the control problem arises, we propose a local indirect adaptive control scheme for this class of interconnected non-linear systems. Then, we establish that the proposed local adaptive control scheme is suitable for monotonically decreasing the magnitude of deviations of each dynamic system's state from its sink manifold provided that (a) the exogenous input is varying sufficiently slowly and (b) the parameter error is sufficiently small. As a consequence, these deviations are bounded with a bound independent of the number of subsystems in the interconnection.

The problem to be solved involves a highway automation project. The overall system consists of N vehicles (the platoon). Each vehicle is driven by the same input u and the state of the kth vehicle affects the dynamics of the (k+1)th vehicle. Furthermore, the dynamics of each vehicle is affected by its (local) state-feedback controller. Under very general conditions, it is shown that for sufficiently slowly varying inputs, decentralized controllers can be designed so that the platoon maintains its cohesion.< >

In this paper, we consider the problem of combined longitudinal and lateral control of a platoon of non-identical vehicles on a curved lane of a highway. Based on nonlinear models of vehicles' combined longitudinal and lateral dynamics, we propose nonlinear control laws for a platoon of vehicles accelerating on a curved lane of highway. The implementation issues regarding the needed sensors, estimators, guidance system, and communication link are discussed. Simulation results show that the proposed control laws perform well, for roads with suitably large radius of curvature, under nominal operation.

This paper presents a preliminary system study of a longitudinal control law for a platoon of nonidentical vehicles using a simplified nonlinear model for the vehicle dynamics. This study advances the art of automatic longitudinal control for a platoon of vehicles in the sense that it considers longer platoons composed of nonidentical vehicles; furthermore, the longitudinal control laws presented in this study take advantage of communication possibilities not available in the recent past. We assume that for i = 1, 2, . . . vehicle i knows at all times vl and al (the velocity and acceleration of the lead vehicle) in addition to the distance between vehicle i and the preceding vehicle, i − 1. A control law is developed and is tested on a simulation of a platoon of 16 vehicles where the lead vehicle increases its velocity at a rate of 3 m.s−2; it is shown that the distance between successive vehicles does not change by more than 0.12 m in spite of variations in the masses of the vehicles (from the nominal), of communication delay and of noise in measurements.

This chapter develops the main properties of the linear time-invariant representationR = [A B C D] when the matrix A is general.

This book is the result of our teaching over the years an undergraduate course on Linear Optimal Systems to applied mathematicians and a first-year graduate course on Linear Systems to engineers. The