A New Control Approach for Platoon Operations during Vehicle Exit/Entry

A new platoon control concept is introduced, called Back Control, in which the controller of a given vehicle utilizes state information from the lead, preceding, and following vehicles, as well as the vehicle itself. Simulations are carried out on two non-steady state platoon operations - vehicle exit and vehicle entry from a platoon. A previously developed longitudinal controller is utilized as a reference to the proposed Back controller and a ride quality index is used to assess passenger comfort in these simulations. It is shown that the Back controller has advantages over the reference controller in these two operations and that it is therefore worth examining as a candidate controller of vehicular platoons, especially in non-nominal operations.