Adaptive fuzzy sliding mode control for coordinated longitudinal and lateral motions of multiple autonomous vehicles in a platoon

In this paper, the platoon control problem of autonomous vehicles in highway is studied. Since the autonomous vehicles have the characteristics of nonlinearities, external disturbances and strong coupling, a novel adaptive fuzzy sliding coordinated control system is constructed to supervise the longitudinal and lateral motions of autonomous vehicles, in which the fuzzy system is employed to approximate the unknown nonlinear functions. Due to the low sensitivity to disturbances and plant parameter variations, the proposed control approach is an efficient way to handle with the complex dynamic plants operating under un-certainty conditions. The asymptotic stability of adaptive coordinated platoon close-loop control system is verified based on the Lyapunov stability theory. The results indicate that the presented adaptive coordinated platoon control approach can accurately achieve the tracking performance and ensures the stability and riding comfort of autonomous vehicles in a platoon. Finally, simulation test is exploited to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control approach.