Study on stability and scalability of vehicular platoon with a bidirectional ring interconnection

Abstract

Abstract This paper studies the stability and scalability of the platoon where multiple vehicles move in a closed roadway and are coupled in a bidirectional ring. Each vehicle regulates its longitudinal motion based on bidirectional asymmetric control with triple asymmetry factors. By exploiting Hermite stability criterion, we derive necessary and sufficient conditions of stability for the n‐vehicle platoon. Based on parametric robustness analysis, necessary and sufficient conditions of scalably asymptotic stability are further obtained, meaning that the stability is independent of the number of vehicles in the platoon. It is proved that symmetric spacing feedback is necessary for scalably asymptotic stability and the first spatial mode is the least stable among all the non‐zero modes. Numerical computations show that the stability region in the space of feedback gains is favourable when the asymmetry level on speed gain is small and the asymmetry level on acceleration gain is large, whereas it may deteriorate rapidly when these two asymmetry factors have different signs.

Keywords

• Control system analysis and synthesis methods
• Stability in control theory
• Nonlinear control systems
• Spatial variables control