On $\mathcal{L}_{\infty}$ string stability of nonlinear bidirectional asymmetric heterogeneous platoon systems

TL;DR

This paper establishes a sufficient condition for $\\mathcal{L}_{\infty}$ string stability in nonlinear, heterogeneous, bidirectionally coupled vehicle platoons with asymmetric interactions, enabling independent control design for each vehicle.

Contribution

It provides a novel sufficient condition for string stability in complex heterogeneous platoons with nonlinear and asymmetric couplings, facilitating decentralized control design.

Findings

The approach is demonstrated through a numerical example.

The stability condition can be formulated as an optimization problem.

Control protocols can be designed independently for each vehicle.

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the study of bidirectionally coupled platoon systems. The case considered is when the vehicles are heterogeneous and the coupling can be nonlinear and asymmetric. For such systems, a sufficient condition for $\mathcal{L}_{\infty}$ string stability is presented. The effectiveness of our approach is illustrated via a numerical example, where it is shown how our result can be recast as an optimization problem, allowing to design the control protocol for each vehicle independently on the other vehicles and hence leading to a bottom-up approach for the design of string stable systems able to track a time-varying reference speed.