Distributed predictive control of communicating and platooning vehicles

This paper proposes an approach to robust model predictive control for distributed systems with chain structure. Motivated by the application of a platoon of autonomous vehicles in linear motion, we consider a system structure in which the dynamics of each subsystem is specified in relative error coordinates and in affine form, considering the input of the preceding subsystem as disturbance (since locally not known a-priori). Employing principles of RMPC suggested before by Kerrigan et al. for the case of non-distributed systems, we first show how robust strong feasibility can be guaranteed for the distributed case. The drawback of this approach is that the zone of robustness is obtained in a relatively conservative form, and that the control error, in general, cannot be forced to zero. Thus, in the second part, we include a scheme for communicating predicted control trajectories between the subsystems in order to improve the control performance and to render the solution less conservative.