Combined lateral and longitudinal CACC for a unicycle-type platoon

This paper presents the controller design for combined lateral and longitudinal Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) for a unicycle-type platoon with emphasis on the cornering maneuvers. A decentralized controller for lateral and longitudinal behavior is designed using input-output linearization by static feedback. A preceding vehicle look-ahead approach is adapted in the controller to maintain desired inter-vehicle distance. However, due to the position control of the look-ahead point, the follower vehicle may cut corners on turns. In this paper, the extension of a look-ahead point that is able to compensate the cutting-corner behavior is then proposed. To validate the theoretical analysis, the full nonlinear system together with the developed controller is simulated for two scenarios, a circular path and a particular path scenario, and a comparison is made between the system with the preceding vehicle look-ahead and the extended look-ahead. The simulation shows that the proposed lateral and longitudinal controller using the extended look-ahead eliminates the cutting corner behavior.