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Longitudinal and lateral control of vehicle platoons : A unifying framework to prevent corner cutting

Wijnbergen, Paul ; Jeeninga, Mark LU orcid ; de Haan, Redmer and Lefeber, Erjen LU (2025) In Automatica 177.
Abstract

The formation of platoons, where groups of vehicles follow each other at close distances, has the potential to increase road capacity. In this paper, a decentralized control approach is presented that extends the well-known constant headway vehicle following approach to the two-dimensional case, i.e., lateral control is included in addition to the longitudinal control. The presented control scheme employs a direct vehicle-following approach where each vehicle in the platoon is responsible for following the directly preceding vehicle according to a nonlinear spacing policy. The proposed spacing policy is motivated by an approximation of a delay-based spacing policy and results in a generalization of the constant-headway spacing policy to... (More)

The formation of platoons, where groups of vehicles follow each other at close distances, has the potential to increase road capacity. In this paper, a decentralized control approach is presented that extends the well-known constant headway vehicle following approach to the two-dimensional case, i.e., lateral control is included in addition to the longitudinal control. The presented control scheme employs a direct vehicle-following approach where each vehicle in the platoon is responsible for following the directly preceding vehicle according to a nonlinear spacing policy. The proposed spacing policy is motivated by an approximation of a delay-based spacing policy and results in a generalization of the constant-headway spacing policy to the two-dimensional case. By input–output linearization, necessary and sufficient conditions for the tracking of the nonlinear spacing policy are obtained, which motivate the synthesis of the lateral and longitudinal controllers of each vehicle in the platoon. By deriving an internal state representation of the follower vehicle and showing input-to-state stability, the internal dynamics for each leader–follower subsystem are shown to be well-behaved. Furthermore, the spacing policy results in string-stable behavior of the platoon when driving in the longitudinal direction. The results are illustrated by a simulation.

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author
; ; and
organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
Longitudinal and lateral control, Nonlinear systems, Platooning
in
Automatica
volume
177
article number
112340
publisher
Elsevier
external identifiers
  • scopus:105003422012
ISSN
0005-1098
DOI
10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112340
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
bdc1f1cc-c1d2-4e3a-83fd-1c7851abd666
date added to LUP
2025-07-16 14:00:07
date last changed
2025-07-16 14:01:05
@article{bdc1f1cc-c1d2-4e3a-83fd-1c7851abd666,
  abstract     = {{<p>The formation of platoons, where groups of vehicles follow each other at close distances, has the potential to increase road capacity. In this paper, a decentralized control approach is presented that extends the well-known constant headway vehicle following approach to the two-dimensional case, i.e., lateral control is included in addition to the longitudinal control. The presented control scheme employs a direct vehicle-following approach where each vehicle in the platoon is responsible for following the directly preceding vehicle according to a nonlinear spacing policy. The proposed spacing policy is motivated by an approximation of a delay-based spacing policy and results in a generalization of the constant-headway spacing policy to the two-dimensional case. By input–output linearization, necessary and sufficient conditions for the tracking of the nonlinear spacing policy are obtained, which motivate the synthesis of the lateral and longitudinal controllers of each vehicle in the platoon. By deriving an internal state representation of the follower vehicle and showing input-to-state stability, the internal dynamics for each leader–follower subsystem are shown to be well-behaved. Furthermore, the spacing policy results in string-stable behavior of the platoon when driving in the longitudinal direction. The results are illustrated by a simulation.</p>}},
  author       = {{Wijnbergen, Paul and Jeeninga, Mark and de Haan, Redmer and Lefeber, Erjen}},
  issn         = {{0005-1098}},
  keywords     = {{Longitudinal and lateral control; Nonlinear systems; Platooning}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  publisher    = {{Elsevier}},
  series       = {{Automatica}},
  title        = {{Longitudinal and lateral control of vehicle platoons : A unifying framework to prevent corner cutting}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112340}},
  doi          = {{10.1016/j.automatica.2025.112340}},
  volume       = {{177}},
  year         = {{2025}},
}