Hybrid Cost Function Distributed MPC for Vehicle Platoons with Stability and String Stability Properties

Distributed MPC schemes for control of vehicle platoons typically employ a p-norms based cost function to achieve stability and string stability. Quadratic cost functions yield smoother trajectories, but they are not aligned with string stability conditions. Hence, in this letter, we develop distributed MPC controllers for vehicle platoons based on a hybrid cost function, which combines infinity norms and quadratic forms. Sufficient conditions for global platoon stability and leader-follower string stability are derived for the developed hybrid cost function and applied to lateral dynamics control. Simulation results show that the hybrid cost function yields lateral position errors that are 10 times smaller (for the maximum error) compared with an infinity norms based cost function.