Abstract: This paper proposes a robust cooperative control strategy for multiple autonomous vehicles to achieve safe and efficient platoon formation, and it analyzes the effects of vehicle stability boundaries and parameter uncertainties. The cooperative vehicle control framework is composed of the upper planning level and lower tracking control level. In the planning level, the trajectory of each vehicle is generated by using the multi-objective flocking algorithm to form the platoon. The parameters of the flocking algorithm are optimized to prevent the vehicle speed and yaw rate from going beyond their limits. In the lower level, to realize the stable platoon formation, a lumped disturbance observer is designed to gain the stable-state reference, and a distributed robust model predictive controller is proposed to achieve the offset-free trajectory tracking while downsizing the effects of parameter uncertainties. The simulation results show the proposed cooperative control strategy can achieve safe and efficient platoon formation.

Key words: Platoon formation · Robust model predictive controller · Multiple autonomous vehicles · Parameter uncertainty