A Lyapunov function approach to longitudinal control of vehicles in a platoon

The Lyapunov second method is used to derive a control law that can he used to control the spacing between vehicles in a platoon. A third-order system is adopted to model the vehicle and powertrain dynamics. In addition, the concept of "expected spacing error" is introduced and used to form a Lyapunov function. Then a control law that always decreases the Lyapunov function is selected. A platoon of four vehicles and various scenarios are used to demonstrate the performance of the proposed control law.