A STUDY OF CONSENSUS AND COLLISION AVOIDANCE IN A PLATOON OF VEHICLES USING ADAPTIVE CRUISE CONTROL

Abstract

Vehicle platooning has been the subject of much research. Transfer function analysis of intervehicle distance errors is traditionally utilized to analyze the string stability of platoons. Consensus theory has been the subject of recent study of close-loop stability of platoons. This thesis extends the cooperative control approach to platoon behavior analysis to include the leader as an internal source of information for the communication graph of a platoon. A 1-Leader Type (1LT) graph is defined and an equation is proposed for the formation consensus values of leader and follower nodes in a platoon. Simulations are performed to support the proposed equations. A method is proposed to tune controller gains to achieve collision avoidance despite string instability.