Distributed Vehicle Platoon Tracking Control for Optimal Energy Consumption with Switching Topologies

This paper investigates the distributed platoon tracking control problem for a group of nonlinear vehicles. The optimal energy consumption and switching communication topologies are both taken into consideration. In order to reach the optimal performance, an optimization framework is developed involving the switching topologies. Then, according to the neighboring vehicles’ states, a distributed platoon control scheme is proposed with two control parameters. The first control parameter is to deal with the switching topologies and the other one can optimize the energy consumption. Moreover, the stability conditions of our proposed platoon control system and the average dwell time for the switching topologies are both provided. In final, numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness and advantages of our proposed approach.