Transients of platoons with asymmetric and different Laplacians

TL;DR

This paper studies the transient behavior of vehicle platoons with asymmetric control and friction, demonstrating improved performance through an integral controller and optimization, modeling the system as a wave equation.

Contribution

It introduces a third-order vehicle model with friction and asymmetric control, showing how to optimize parameters for better transient response and wave-like behavior.

Findings

Platoon behaves as a wave equation with different wave velocities.

Optimization improves controller parameters for transient performance.

Simulations outperform other nearest-neighbor control scenarios.

Abstract

We consider an asymmetric control of platoons of identical vehicles with nearest-neighbor interaction. Recent results show that if the vehicle uses different asymmetries for position and velocity errors, the platoon has a short transient and low overshoots. In this paper we investigate the properties of vehicles with friction. To achieve consensus, an integral part is added to the controller, making the vehicle a third-order system. We show that the parameters can be chosen so that the platoon behaves as a wave equation with different wave velocities. Simulations suggest that our system has a better performance than other nearest-neighbor scenarios. Moreover, an optimization-based procedure is used to find the controller properties.