With the rapid development of automobile industrialization, the traffic
environment is becoming increasingly complex, traffic congestion and road
accidents are becoming critical, and the importance of Intelligent
Transportation System (ITS) is increasingly prominent. In our research, for the
problem of cooperative control of heterogeneous intelligent connected vehicle
platoons under ITS considering communication delay. The proposed method
integrates the nonlinear Intelligent Driver Model (IDM) and a spacing
compensation mechanism, aiming to ensure that the platoon maintains structural
stability in the presence of communication disturbances, while also enhancing
the comfort and safety of following vehicles. Firstly, construct heterogeneous
vehicle platoon system based on the third-order vehicle dynamics model,
Predecessor-Leader-Following (PLF) communication topology, and the fixed
time-distance strategy, while a nonlinear distributed controller integrating the
IDM following behavior and the front-vehicle spacing compensation mechanism is
designed to enhance the robustness of the system to delay disturbance. Secondly,
leveraging the Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional framework in conjunction with the
Moon inequality, an LMI-based stability condition is derived to ensure the
uniform asymptotic stability of the system. The corresponding maximum admissible
communication delay is then determined, followed by a detailed analysis of the
system's string stability. Finally, comparative simulations are conducted on the
MATLAB/Simulink platform. Simulation results verify that the proposed controller
offers enhanced convergence speed, reduced acceleration variability, and
improved suppression of spacing errors under communication delay disturbances.
Compared to conventional linear controllers, it demonstrates markedly superior
control performance and greater practical applicability. This method provides a
valuable reference for the robust design and performance optimization of
cooperative control systems for heterogeneous vehicle platoons under
communication delay conditions.