String stable integral control design for vehicle platoons with disturbances

Abstract This paper presents a control design with integral action for vehicle platoons with disturbances that ensures string stability of the closed-loop system and disturbance rejection. The addition of integral action and a coordinate change allows the development of sufficient smoothness conditions on the closed-loop system to ensure that the closed-loop system using the proposed controller is string stable when subject to time-varying disturbances, while rejecting constant disturbances. In addition, bounds for the tracking error of the platoon configuration are also given. A case study is considered together with a suitable controller structure, which satisfies the required smoothness conditions. Simulation results illustrate the performance of the closed-loop system.