Constraint-Based Finite-Time Tracking Control for Intelligent Multivehicle Systems Considering Communication and Operation Restrictions

This article presents a constraint-based finite-time tracking control scheme for multivehicle systems (MVSs) with communication and operation restrictions, including network attacks and actuator faults. The stable operation of MVSs significantly depends on the effective communication transmission of state information (position and velocity) between vehicles and the ideal operation of the vehicle’s own actuators. However, the actual transmission signals may be tampered with due to malicious attacks, and different faults may occur during the operation of transportation. Therefore, first, a novel coordinate transformation is developed to cope with the difficulty of distorted position and velocity information, which will lead to follower vehicles making incorrect decisions. Then, an adaptive controller is designed with the help of the fuzzy approximation method to solve the problems of actuator fault compensation and unknown nonlinearity of vehicle’s dynamic. Besides, the nonlinear velocity constraint function is designed to avoid collisions and congestion between vehicles so as to ensure a safe and comfortable transportation environment. Not only a safe distance between vehicles is achieved in a finite time, but also the velocity constraint of vehicles is maintained based on the proposed finite-time control scheme. Finally, the simulation example elaborates the effectiveness of the presented method in this article.