Nonlinear longitudinal cooperative control of heterogeneous connected vehicle platoon considering car-following interactions and communication delay

This article designs a novel controller for heterogeneous connected vehicles (CVs) platoon subject to communication delay. Firstly, third-order vehicle dynamics is used to capture the heterogeneity of vehicles. A new nonlinear controller for the CV platoon is proposed in the presence of car-following interactions, the acceleration difference and communication delays. Then, the internal stability of the CV platoon and the upper bound of communication delay are deduced by using the Lyapunov theorem. Also, the string stability of the linearized CV platoon system is proved by using the infinite-norm method. Additionally, a hierarchical control strategy suitable for co-simulation is designed to overcome the nonlinearity of vehicles and achieve consistency between the desired and actual acceleration. Finally, the superiority and effectiveness of the developed controller are verified by extensive simulation and cosimulation.