A structured ℋ_∞ approach to Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control of heterogeneous vehicles

This paper proposes a novel approach to a Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) system using structured ℋ<inf xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">∞</inf> synthesis. The approach allows vehicle platoons to consist of heterogeneous dynamics models. This method allows a platoon to be considered a multi-agent system (MAS) and the control problem is solved by including the different models of the vehicles at once, while performance specifications are satisfied in the frequency domain. The suggested control strategy ensures the consensus of vehicle velocities and spacing distances at the steady state of the platoons. The simulation results, presented below, validate the capabilities and the potential of the proposed control framework in a platoon with different vehicle masses in a) predecessor-following (PF), and b) two-predecessor-following (TPF) communication topologies.