Prescribed-Performance Sliding Mode Control for 2-D Vehicle Platoons with Prescribed-Time Disturbance Observer

This paper addresses the cooperative control problem for the 2-D vehicle platoon subjected to external disturbances. By introducing prescribed performance functions and error transformation, the observer-based sliding mode control scheme is designed for the platoon. Here, the sliding mode controller is designed to stabilize the tracking errors within the predefined time, while the disturbance observer is utilized to estimate and compensate for external disturbances accurately. This new control scheme can guarantee the desired control performance with fast convergence and minimal overshoot. Moreover, it can help vehicular platoons to achieve multi-lane vehicle merging and lane-changing operations efficiently. Numerical simulations confirm the practical viability of the developed approach.