A Fully Distributed Antiwindup Control Protocol for Intelligent-Connected Electric Vehicles Platooning With Switching Topologies and Input Saturation

This article proposes a fully distributed adaptive control framework to tackle the problem of intelligent-connected electric vehicles platooning with input saturation and topology changes. First, a longitudinal vehicle platoon system is investigated. A linearized dynamics model of each vehicle is provided while considering input saturation. Second, abnormal communication scenarios are given, which are described by the Markovian randomly switching topologies with several assumptions provided. Furthermore, a triple-observer structure consisting of a local observer, a distributed observer, and an antiwindup observer, is developed to establish a fully distributed adaptive antiwindup controller. The controller enables to ensure the stability of the vehicle platoon system solely requiring the local output information of each following vehicle, while avoiding the acquisition of global information. This control protocol provides a reliable solution for dealing with the input saturation constraints and the randomly switching communication topologies. Finally, the feasibility and the effectiveness of this adaptive protocol are validated by conducting some numerical simulations.