Impedance control for a vehicle platoon system

An impedance control system utilizing a serial chain of a spring-damper is proposed for a vehicle platoon system in this paper. In order to ensure the safety of the vehicle platoon, it is required to regulate the distance between vehicles at a pre-assigned value, in spite of vehicle model error or noise in the measurement signal. Since the spring-damper system is physically stable and widely used to represent interaction with uncertain environments, it is appropriate for the guidance model describing the interaction between vehicles within a platoon. The serial spring-damper guidance model will be incorporated with the state-space equation of vehicle motion including the position and the heading, which gives the unified algorithm for the lateral control and the longitudinal control of the vehicle platoon system. Computer simulations are carried out to verify the robustness against the uncertainties such as the vehicle model error and the noise in the measurement signals.