Platooning Control of Vehicular Systems by Using Sampled Positions

This brief studies the platooning control problem of vehicular systems, where the leader control input is non-zero. In contrast to the existing results with full knowledge of the vehicle state (i.e., position, velocity, and acceleration) for feedback, a new platoon control law is designed, which depends on the currently and most recently sampled positions only. To explore the input-to-state stability (ISS) of the resulting platoon control system, sufficient conditions are presented in the form of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) by using appropriate Lyapunov functionals. Then a design criterion for the existence of the sampled-position-based controller is derived. Finally, an example illustrates the efficiency of the method.