Sliding Mode Control for Automatic Driving of a Platoon of Vehicles

During recent years, a number of studies has demonstrated the efficaciousness of the longitudinal control of platoon of vehicles in order to improve the exploitation of the capacity of road networks while maintaining safety distances between vehicles. Yet, the use of cruise control in urban areas can be critical because of the possible presence of pedestrians or other vulnerable road users (VRUs). The objective of increasing pedestrians' safety can be attained by providing the control system of the vehicles of the platoon with some collision avoidance capability. This issue is investigated in the present paper. The driver assistance system presented in this paper is realized by means of vehicle supervisors, which make the decision on which is the appropriate current control mode for each controlled vehicle. The control methodology adopted in the proposed control system is sliding mode control of the first and the second order