Collision-Free Platooning Control for Automated Vehicles Under Improved Constant-Time-Headway Strategies and Watermarking

Intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) are viewed as a potential solution to various social and environmental issues caused by the rapid increase in the number of vehicles. As a kernel of ITSs, platooning control reveals a superior ability in enhancing traffic efficiency. This paper looks into the issue of collision-free platooning control for automated vehicles based on watermarking-based information exchange. The relative velocity of vehicles is used to propose an improved constant time headway (ICTH) that enhances both traffic efficiency and safety requirements. Then, an effective platooning controller is created by combining a platooning tracking protocol and a collision avoidance protocol via an artificial potential field. Some sufficient conditions are established to ensure the required platooning requirement with collision avoidance, as well as data privacy under the adopted watermarking scheme. In addition, the desired gain of collision-free controllers can be achieved by solving matrix inequalities, regardless of the number of vehicles involved. Finally, the proposed collision-free platooning control scheme is verified by comprehensive simulation results.