Distributed PI Control For Heterogeneous Nonlinear Platoon of Autonomous Connected Vehicles

Abstract In this paper we present a distributed PI-based control law that guarantees the platoon formation to track leader velocity with a pre-fixed inter-vehicular distance, when vehicles are heterogeneous in both parameters and nonlinear drivetrain dynamics. Moreover, differently from most of the approaches in the literature, the proposed PI protocol intrinsically compensates for the nonlinear, heterogeneous and uncertain drivetrain dynamics without requiring any feedforward control action. We formulate sufficient conditions for closed-loop heterogeneous non-linear vehicular network stability that can be used to tune the PI control parameters. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed PI controller in both nominal and uncertain platooning scenario.