String stability of disturbed switched vehicle platoon systems via robust event-triggered mechanism

This study presents a robust event-triggered control protocol based on a discrete event-triggered communication scheme (DECS) to resolve vehicle platoon communication topological changes, external disturbances, and information delays. The random variation of the data transmission link among the platoons in real traffic was considered and modeled by the Markov chain combined with the directed graph method. The effects of delays and air resistance on the vehicle platoon were studied using the system parameters, such as external interference and equivalent information delays. To ensure the vehicle platoon’s inner-vehicle stability, a variable-gain distributed controller is proposed based on Markovian jumping system stability theory and H ∞ control. Finally, the ℒ 2 stochastic string stability is defined to attenuate perturbations as they propagate through a platoon. Simulation studies were conducted on a vehicle platoon under four random-switching communication topologies with two different control methods to verify the theoretical results. Compared with traditional robust platoon control, the proposed control method achieves vehicle platoon stability with a lower computational burden.