Switched Pinning Control for Vehicle Platoons via Mixed Logical Dynamical Modeling

This paper considers a velocity control problem of vehicle platoons using pinning control. We assume that all vehicles can get velocity information of the front vehicle. External control inputs are applied only to some vehicles called pinning agents, and the others adjust their velocities autonomously. As a result, velocities of all vehicles converge to the target value. Here, we propose a switched pinning control method for the situation that the vehicle platoons merge according to their relative positions. Our method consists of two sub-methods. The first is an optimal switching method of pinning agents based on MLD (Mixed Logical Dynamical) system model and MPC (Model Predictive Control). The second is an MPC algorithm for the dynamical network structure of the platoon. Our proposed method enables us to improve consensus speed and to control multiple vehicle platoons separately at the same time.