Asymptotic platoon control of networked vehicles with an artificially regulated dynamic leader

This paper investigates the asymptotic tracking control problem of a vehicle platoon system (VPS), in which a dynamic leader guides several follower vehicles. To enhance the adaptability of the VPS in complex driving scenarios, a dynamic leader equipped with an artificial regulation mechanism is proposed to enable responsive trajectory adjustments. The control strategy is divided into trajectory correction tracking control for the dynamic leader and leader-following consensus control for the followers. To address model uncertainties and external disturbances in the controller design, a second-order time-varying gain extended state observer is constructed to compensate for these effects, thereby significantly enhancing the disturbance rejection capability of the system. Moreover, the asymptotic tracking performance of the entire platoon is achieved effectively by introducing coordinate transformations based on a fused scalar function. Lyapunov analysis establishes the boundedness of the control signals. Finally, numerical simulations and software-hardware co-simulation experiments validate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy.