Safe platooning control of connected and autonomous vehicles on curved multi-lane roads

Abstract: This paper investigates the safe platoon formation tracking and merging control problem of connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) on curved multi-lane roads. The first novelty is the separation of the control designs into two distinct parts: a lateral control law that ensures a geometrical convergence towards the reference path regardless of the translational velocity, and a longitudinal control design for each vehicle to achieve the desired relative arc length and velocity with respect to its neighboring vehicle. The second novelty is exploiting the constructive barrier feedback as an additive term to the nominal tracking control, ensuring both lateral and longitudinal collision avoidance. This constructive barrier feedback acts as a dissipative term, slowing down the relative velocity toward obstacles without affecting the nominal controller's performance. Consequently, our proposed control method enables safe platoon formation of vehicles on curved multi-lane roads, with theoretical guarantees for safety invariance and stability analysis. Simulation and experimental results on connected vehicles are provided to further validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.