Robust Distributed Time-Varying Vehicle Formation Control under Switching Topologies and External Disturbances

Distributed vehicle formation control is a topical research issue in recent years. Multi-task requirements pose new challenges to vehicle formation control. This paper investigates the distributed time-varying formation control issue of second-order linear multi-vehicle formation system in the case of switching topologies and external disturbances exist simultaneously. In the system model architecture proposed in this paper, connected and automated vehicles are partitioned into two categories: virtual reference vehicle and followers. The virtual reference vehicle provides a reference trajectory for the macro movement of the entire system. The followers track the trajectory provided by the virtual reference vehicle, and realize the coordination of the entire system through mutual cooperation with other followers, thereby realizing time-varying formation control. In the case of switching topologies and external disturbances occurring at the same time, a distributed time-varying vehicle formation control protocol is constructed based on the relative information feedback on the local limited neighbor nodes between connected and automated vehicles. Then Lyapunov theory is used to prove the closed-loop stability of the vehicle formation system. Finally, the numerical simulation results verify that the method presented in this paper can realize the time-varying formation control.