Experimental Implementation and Validation of Predictor-Based CACC for Vehicular Platoons With Distinct Actuation Delays

TL;DR

This paper experimentally validates a predictor-based cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) system for vehicle platoons, effectively compensating for long and distinct actuation delays to ensure stability and tracking.

Contribution

It provides the first experimental validation of a predictor-based CACC design tailored for heterogeneous vehicle delays, with explicit control formulas and stability analysis.

Findings

Experimental validation confirms effectiveness in vehicle stability.

Simulation results support scalability to larger platoons.

Design guarantees string stability despite delays.

Abstract

We provide experimental validation, in a pair of vehicles, of a recently introduced predictor-based cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) design, developed for achieving delay compensation in heterogeneous vehicular platoons subject to long actuation delays that may be distinct for each individual vehicle. We provide the explicit formulae of the control design that is implemented, accounting for the effect of zero-order hold and sampled measurements; as well as we obtain vehicle and string stability conditions numerically, via derivation of the transfer functions relating the speeds of pairs of consecutive vehicles. We also present consistent simulation results for a platoon with a larger number of vehicles, under digital implementation of the controller. Both the simulation and experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the predictor-based CACC design in guaranteeing individual vehicle stability, string stability, and tracking, despite long/distinct actuation delays.