An Extended Delayed Spacing Policy for Vehicle Platoons with Input-delays

In this paper, we introduce the extended delayed spacing policy for vehicle platoons, motivated by its capability to deal with input delays. The extended delayed spacing policy can be asymptotically tracked with a state feedback controller that does not depend on future or past states. As the input can be regarded as the result of input-output linearization, it remains to show that the controller also guarantees stable internal dynamics. However, internal stability is shown to depend on the choice of parameters in the spacing policy. Finally, it is shown that string stability is a consequence of the choice of spacing policy and depends on the choice of parameters. A sufficient condition on the parameters of the spacing policy guaranteeing string stability is presented. The results are illustrated through simulations.