Modified Quadratic Spacing Policy and Extended State Observer-Based Adaptive Platoon Tracking Scheme for Heterogeneous Vehicles

This work focuses on tracking and controlling a distributed platoon consisting of heterogeneous vehicles with an output dead-zone and model uncertainties. The influence of the output dead zone is handled by the Nussbaum function, and the total disturbances of each channel are estimated using extended state observers (ESOs). Moreover, to remove the traditional condition of zero initial spacing errors (ISEs), a modified quadratic spacing policy (MQSP) is established, which can obtain the traffic flow stability (TFS). A distributed platoon control technique is introduced based on MQSP, second-order ESOs, and a backstepping method to achieve internal and string stability. MATLAB simulation results and PRESCAN/SIMULINK co-simulation experiments testify to the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.