Nonlinear platoon control of Arduino cars with range-limited sensors

This paper investigates the problem of platoon control with sensor range limitation. A nonlinear vehicular platoon model is established, in which the sensing range constraint described by a piecewise nonlinear function is involved. Then a robust nonlinear control design method is proposed based on a disturbance observer and the backstepping technique. The results are obtained in the context of both individual vehicle stability and platoon string stability analysis, which can lead to substantially enhanced platoon control performance with a guaranteed level of attenuation of the disturbance caused by lead vehicle acceleration and wind gust. The effectiveness of the method has been shown by numerical simulations and experiments carried out with Arduino cars.