This paper investigates the output feedback control problem of a vehicle platoon with a constant time headway (CTH) policy, where each vehicle can communicate with its consecutive vehicles. Firstly, based on the integrated-sliding-mode (ISM) technique, a neural adaptive sliding-mode control algorithm is developed to ensure that the vehicle platoon is moving with the CTH policy and full state measurement. Then, to further decrease the measurement complexity and reduce the communication load, an output feedback control protocol is proposed with only position information, in which a higher order sliding-mode observer is designed to estimate the other required information (velocities and accelerations). In order to avoid collisions among the vehicles, the string stability of the whole vehicle platoon is proven through the stability theorem. Finally, numerical simulation results are provided to verify its effectiveness and advantages over the traditional sliding-mode control method in vehicle platoons.

In this paper, the vehicle platoon control problems for a group of heterogeneous vehicles are investigated, where the multiple constraints of the vehicles and the communication delays among the vehicles are taken into consideration. A distributed model predictive control (DMPC) scheme is proposed to drive the heterogeneous vehicles into the desired platoon. In this DMPC framework, the multiple constraints, including the control constraints, state constraints, and jerk constraints, are employed to describe the practical characteristics of vehicles and the communication delays are time-varying and bounded. In this framework, a group of platoon control schemes is proposed based on the DMPC techniques. Furthermore, the feasibility and stability of the proposed vehicle platoon control system are strictly analyzed. Finally, numerical simulation and experiment with TurtleBot3 mobile robots are provided to validate the effectiveness of proposed approaches.

We investigate the vehicle platoon problems, where the actuator saturation and absent velocity measurement are taken into consideration. Firstly, a novel algorithm, where a smooth function is introduced to deal with the sharp corner of the input signals, is proposed for a group of vehicles with actuator saturation by using the consensus theory. Secondly, by applying an auxiliary system for the followers to estimate the velocities, a control strategy for the vehicle platoon with actuator saturation and absent velocity measurement is designed via the adaptive control approach. Finally, numerical simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.