Robust Distributed Model Predictive Control of Multi-Platoon Leader in Mixed Traffic

With the development of intelligent vehicle and platoon technology, multi-platoon system will become a new solution to further improve traffic efficiency on highways. However, the existing research seldom consider the interference of human-driven vehicles on multi-platoon stability and the following strategy of multi-platoon leader in mixed traffic. In this paper, a robust distributed model predictive control method for multi-platoon leader in mixed traffic is proposed to reduce the impact of human-driven vehicles on multi-platoon control performance. The following control strategy of multi-platoon leader is proposed firstly, which flexibly determines the following control targets according to the states of leader and HDV to avoid unnecessary frequent acceleration and deceleration. Then, the robust model prediction controller of multi-platoon leader is designed, where the states of sub-platoon leader are added to the objective function in the nominal system optimization problem to reduce the states change of the following vehicles under the influence of HDV from both forward and backward traffic. Furthermore, the auxiliary control law is designed to eliminate the error between the actual states and the nominal states to achieve the suppression of HDV interference. The simulation results show that the multi-platoon leader following control strategy can effectively reduce the speed variation of the multi-platoon to suppress the impact of HDV motion uncertainty on multi-platoon. Moreover, compared with the robust model prediction method of single-platoon leader without considering the state of the rear vehicle, the proposed method can reduce the control errors and improve the stability of multi-platoon.