Hierarchical Prescribed-Time Platoon Control for Heterogeneous Vehicles With Actuator Faults and System Uncertainties

The paper investigates the prescribed-time platoon control problem for heterogeneous vehicle systems under actuator faults and system uncertainties. The prescribed-time observer is presented for each vehicle to estimate the leader with an unknown input signal. The proposed observer does not need sign function and boundary information of unknown parameters, which guarantees the continuity of the observer derivatives and improves the transient performance. In the virtual layer, the virtual prescribed-time controller is developed to achieve cooperation between the virtual systems, and the sufficient conditions for prescribed-time stability are derived. In the real layer, the adaptive fault-tolerant controller is proposed for heterogeneous vehicle systems. It is demonstrated that the heterogeneous vehicle system can track the virtual layer in the prescribed time while avoiding propagating faults and uncertainties. Numerical examples are performed on platoon vehicle systems to verify the effectiveness of the presented control scheme.