Safety Spacing Control of Truck Platoon Based on Emergency Braking under Different Road Conditions

Vehicle platooning reduces fuel consumption, improves traffic throughput, and achieves smaller intervehicle spacing which increases the probability of danger during platoon braking. This article presents a sliding mode control based on the safety spacing policy for longitudinal control of a connected truck platoon with a focus on the predecessor following interactions. In particular, the modified safety spacing policy considering the intervehicle braking information communication delay, the sluggish nature of the brake actuator, the road conditions on each vehicle as well as the vehicle motion state is proposed. On this basis, an acceleration sliding mode controller is proposed, which takes into consideration the spacing error and speed error of the intervehicle, and the control error is zero, so as to obtain the expected acceleration of each vehicle in the platoon. Simulation results of truck platooning with six trucks using TurckSim have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed integral sliding mode control method based on the improved safety distance policy under emergency braking conditions. The results also demonstrated the safety of the platoon when driving on the road where the adhesion coefficient changes.