Adaptive Centralized/Decentralized Control and Identification of 1-D Heterogeneous Vehicular Platoons Based on Constant Time Headway Policy

This paper deals with the adaptive control and identification of 1-D platoon of non-identical vehicles. Three common different topologies, such as predecessor following, bi-directional leader following, and two predecessors following are considered as the communication structures of platoon. For each topology, a new neighbor-based adaptive control law is introduced to estimate the parameter uncertainties, such as rolling resistance and air drag force coefficients. By presenting a new theorem, we prove that the estimates of unknown parameters converge to the actual values. Constant time headway policy is used to adjust the inter-vehicle spacing. For each topology, it is shown that the closed-loop dynamics of platoon is asymptotically stable. Afterward, the necessary conditions on control parameters assuring the string stability for each topology are derived by presenting further theorems. Moreover, the proposed methods are generalized for the heterogeneous platoons with time-varying network topology. Simulation results with different scenarios are provided to show the effectiveness of the presented approaches.