This paper investigates an adaptive predefined-time distance regulation control strategy for a two-dimensional (2-D) vehicle platoon with actuator faults and input saturation. First, a novel distance regulation scheme is introduced for scenarios where a ramp vehicle platoon merges into the main lane. After multi-lane fusion is completed, a designated vehicle in the main-lane platoon that receives the merging request actively increases its inter-vehicle distance to create a safe gap, while the distances of the other vehicles remain unchanged. This adjustment may temporarily enlarge tracking errors, which can potentially violate the prescribed performance function (PPF) constraints and threaten platoon stability. To address this issue, a modified prescribed performance function (MPPF) is developed to dynamically relax the error boundary within a specified time window and restore it after merging. Subsequently, an adaptive neural network-based dynamic surface control (DSC) approach is employed to design saturation and fault-tolerant throttle/brake inputs. A predefined-time angle controller is also designed based on an angle sliding mode surface. The resulting position and angle controllers enable the platoon to complete multi-lane fusion and achieve predefined-time stability despite ramp merging. Finally, simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.

This article focuses on the 2-D plane finite-time multilane fusion control problem with velocity sensor faults and actuator faults. First, considering the velocity sensor faults, radial basis function neural networks (RBFNNs) are introduced to approximate sensor fault functions. A finite-time fault-tolerant position controller is designed by employing a hyperbolic tangent function to address the partial failure of the position actuator. Second, in case of complete actuator failure, the backup actuator is activated without altering the controller structure. The majority of prescribed performance functions (PPFs) currently in use are unsuitable for addressing complete actuator failure. As tracking errors may exceed PPF constraints before the backup actuator is activated upon such faults, this could result in vehicle platoon instability. To address this issue, this article designs a modified PPF (MPPF) that is independent of the initial conditions and can adjust the performance boundary according to the error change at specific times by introducing a shifting function. When a complete actuator failure occurs, the MPPF can sacrifice part of the transient performance to enclose the increased tracking error within the range of the MPPF, thus maintaining the stability of the vehicle platoon. When the actuator is working normally or has a partial failure, it can restore the user-specified performance. Then, by constructing a finite-time angle sliding-mode surface, an angle controller is designed. The designed position and angle of finite-time controllers can ensure that the vehicle platoon achieves multilane fusion within a finite time. Finally, through simulation and comparative results, the effectiveness of the proposed MPPF and finite-time fault-tolerant algorithm is demonstrated.

This article focuses on the average-tracking control issue for heterogeneous linear multiagent systems via a fixed-time approach. The agents, with varied dynamics and state dimensions, are subject to external disturbances and each has a unique reference signal that cannot be accessed by the other agents. In this setting, each agent is provided a multiple reference signal state compensator in order to estimate the states of all reference signals. Furthermore, external disturbances are estimated using a fixed-time sliding mode disturbance observer. An anti-disturbance control protocol is proposed by combining the disturbance observer and the state compensator for agents to track the average value of reference signals within a fixed time, which is predetermined and independent of initial states. The efficiency of the suggested average-tracking control mechanism is shown by numerical experiments.

This article addresses the three-dimensional (3-D) coordinated control problem of directed networked aircraft-like vehicles, that is to track a set of given orbits on a sphere and achieve a lateral formation flight. Different from the case of Newton particles, a nonholonomic dynamics with unknown disturbances is considered. A novel method to decouple the spherical orbit tracking subsystem and the lateral formation flying subsystem is proposed. By overlooking the control of the vehicle’s surge velocity, a nonsmooth spherical orbit tracking algorithm is designed by backstepping. Without considering the spherical orbit tracking errors and using any global information of topologies, a distributed, nonsmooth formation protocol is designed. The input-to-state stability (ISS) theory is used to analyze the converge property of the interconnected system consisting of these two subsystems. Simulation results are given to verify the theoretical analysis.