Distributed Cooperative Partial-State Observer for Position Estimation of Vehicle Platoon

This paper proposes a position estimation method for a platoon by distributed cooperative observer set on multiple vehicles and a traffic control system installed on the road. Each observer estimates its own vehicle and the front and rear vehicles, and can exchange the estimated values between the front and rear vehicles by V2V communication or V2X communication. The observer set on the traffic control system can only observe and estimate the absolute position of some target vehicle in the sensing range. The next vehicle’s absolute position can be estimated by interpolating the observed value by the target vehicle position and inter-vehicular distance. Repeating this process, all the vehicles in the platoon can estimate its own position.