Prescribed Performance Concurrent Control of Connected Vehicles With Nonlinear Third-Order Dynamics

Transient performance (e.g., convergence rate and overshoot of spacing errors) is essential for cooperative driving of connected vehicles but was rarely studied. This paper investigates a prescribed performance concurrent control (PPCC) strategy for vehicular platooning systems with consideration of unknown parameters, disturbances and actuator saturation. First, a new spacing policy is considered to achieve string stability and improve the road capacity under virtual leader-bidirectional information flow. Then, to facilitate the controller design without the sign limitations of initial tracking errors (ITEs), a new transformed error function (TEF) is designed. Based on this, PPCC is employed for both individual vehicle stability and string stability directly. Subsequently, distributed adaptive low complexity tracking controllers via sliding mode control method are developed, which can guarantee that all the involved closed-loop signals are uniformly ultimately bounded. Moreover, an auxiliary system is introduced to tackle the effect of actuator saturation. Finally, numerical simulation examples and results are conducted to illustrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed platoon control methods.