Resilient and safe platooning control of connected automated vehicles against intermittent denial-of-service attacks

Connected automated vehicles (CAVs) serve as a promising enabler for future intelligent transportation systems because of their capabilities in improving traffic efficiency and driving safety, and reducing fuel consumption and vehicle emissions. A fundamental issue in CAVs is platooning control that empowers a convoy of CAVs to be cooperatively maneuvered with desired longitudinal spacings and identical velocities on roads. This paper addresses the issue of resilient and safe platooning control of CAVs subject to intermittent denial-of-service (DoS) attacks that disrupt vehicle-to-vehicle communications. First, a heterogeneous and uncertain vehicle longitudinal dynamic model is presented to accommodate a variety of uncertainties, including diverse vehicle masses and engine inertial delays, unknown and nonlinear resistance forces, and a dynamic platoon leader. Then, a resilient and safe distributed longitudinal platooning control law is constructed with an aim to preserve simultaneous individual vehicle stability, attack resilience, platoon safety and scalability. Furthermore, a numerically efficient offline design algorithm for determining the desired platoon control law is developed, under which the platoon resilience against DoS attacks can be maximized but the anticipated stability, safety and scalability requirements remain preserved. Finally, extensive numerical experiments are provided to substantiate the efficacy of the proposed platooning method.