PMP-Based Set-Point Optimization and Sliding-Mode Control of Vehicular Platoons

This paper investigates the problem of set-point optimization and speed tracking control for fuel-time-efficient platooning of vehicles on freeways. A two-layered control architecture is presented for vehicular platooning systems: a set-point optimization layer and a vehicle tracking control layer. In the first layer, a speed-planning algorithm is derived to calculate the speed set-point for the platoon by averaging the optimal speed of each vehicle, which is obtained by solving a fuel-time optimization problem based on Pontryagin's minimum principle. The second layer contains a set of distributed sliding-mode controllers for vehicle tracking control, which can guarantee string stability of the vehicular platoon with a desired intervehicle spacing. The effectiveness of the presented method is demonstrated via simulations.