Fixed‐Time Anti‐Disturbance Sliding Mode Control Based on a Novel Variable Time Headway Policy for Vehicle Platoon

ABSTRACT This paper primarily studies the control problem of disturbed vehicle platoon using fixed‐time control methods. With the proposed variable time headway policy, vehicles can maintain the desired distance to the preceding vehicle during constant speed cruising in advance based on their acceleration. Additionally, a fixed‐time disturbance observer is introduced to estimate the disturbances. The introduction of adaptive law and the hyperbolic tangent function, which replaces the sign function, aims to mitigate the chattering issue of the controller. Subsequently, a fixed‐time anti‐disturbance control strategy is proposed. To address the transient issues caused by non‐zero initial spacing errors, another improved approach is suggested. The effectiveness and superiority of the proposed solutions are verified through numerical simulations.