Experimental Sensitivity Analysis of a Control Algorithm for Line Following Platooning

In this paper, we consider a line-following platooning problem and analyze a cooperative strategy to address distance-sensing issues. The strategy relies on limiting the velocity of the followers, whenever their distance to the imme-diate predecessor is lost due to sensing restrictions or failure. Specifically, we conduct a set of experiments to evaluate the parameter sensitivity of the control algorithm, which corresponds to the percentage of the predecessor's velocity that could be reached by each follower during a sensing loss scenario. We find that proper tuning must be carefully performed, as excessive velocity saturation may lead to undesired behaviors due to poor tracking capabilities, whereas insufficient saturation does not improve performance during unreliable sensing episodes. Our experiments are carried out on the RUPU platform, a low-cost scaled-down platform designed to study lateral and longitudinal control problems in path-following vehicle platooning.