Distributed adaptive robust H∞ control of intelligent‐connected electric vehicles platooning subject to communication delay

Abstract With an aim to improve the performances of intelligent‐connected electric vehicle platoon with communication delay, we present a distributed adaptive robust H∞ control scheme in this paper. First, the longitudinal non‐linear dynamic model of vehicle i is established, and in order to reduce the difficulty of analysing such a non‐linear system, a simplified uncertain dynamic model of vehicle i is obtained via a feedback linearisation method. Second, a novel distributed state‐feedback robust platoon controller is designed by using the relative information between neighbouring electric vehicles. Third, we derive the sufficient condition that the presented distributed robust platoon controller exists under the influence of communication delay. This condition is given in the form of a linear matrix inequality, which is low dimensional and whose dimension is independent of the length of the intelligent electric vehicle platoon. Furthermore, the closed‐loop platoon system controlled by the presented controller is proved stable subject to communication delay by using the Lyapunov stability theory. In addition, an adaptive control term is added to the robust platoon controller. We present the sufficient condition that such a modified controller exists and prove the platoon string stability. Finally, the effectiveness of the presented adaptive robust platoon control scheme is verified by conducting numerical simulation tests