Longitudinal control of a platoon of vehicles with multiple saturating nonlinearities

This study applies a systematic design procedure for addressing multiple saturating nonlinearities in a control system to the problem of longitudinally controlling a platoon of vehicles. The key idea in the design methodology is to modify the existing platoon controller with a supervisor loop that acts only when necessary to prevent saturation. The novelty of this paper appears in the application of this method to nonlinear vehicle and compensator models, and in the development of a decentralized series of such supervisor loops that exploits the natural structure of multivehicle longitudinal control problems. Results of the study are that wind-up effects can systematically be eliminated, but at a cost to performance.