String formations of multiple vehicles via pursuit strategy

String formations of multiple vehicles where all vehicles involved are linked by a virtual thread are studied. Such a formation is useful for a fleet of vehicles driving in a platoon sequence on a road. Our approach differs from most other formation algorithms by separating distance and bearing between neighbouring vehicles. We treat the string formation as a natural consequence of a pursuit game. The proposed pursuit strategy is a distributed algorithm and uses only the relative distance error of the vehicle in front. Stable states are presented and the stability of the algorithm is proven. Finally, some simulation examples are given to demonstrate the practical application of the theoretical results.