Stability control for longitudinal vehicular platoon

The longitudinal control problem of vehicle platoon under disturbance conditions is studied. To eliminate the intervehicle spacing error, a sliding-mode control law with disturbance observer (SMCDO) is proposed for following vehicles in this paper. Firstly, The disturbance is observed through the disturbance observer, and the observation error of the observer converges to zero. Next, a coupling surface is designed for the vehicular platoon, and then, according to Lyapunov stability theorem, the inter-vehicle spacing error of each vehicle is driven to the presented sliding-mode surface and eventually is driven to zero. Furthermore, by choosing appropriate coupling coefficients and utilizing Laplace transforms, the vehicular platoon’s stability is proven. Finally, the simulation demonstrate the effectiveness of the designed SMCDO in handling disturbances, and comparing with the control algorithm without disturbance observer, the superiority of the proposed control algorithm in suppressing disturbance is highlighted.