Distributed event-based lag consensus formation control for connected and autonomous vehicles

Lag formation control is a fundamental cooperative trajectory-following mechanism for multi-connected autonomous vehicle systems (MCAVSs), where the follower vehicles intentionally lag behind that of a designated leader while maintaining a stable platoon formation despite tracking delays. This study addresses the lag formation problem in MCAVSs through a distributed event-triggered control scheme applicable to both directed and undirected communication networks. This event-based communication framework prevents continuous information exchange among follower vehicles, thereby reducing network load and computational demand. Based on Lyapunov stability analysis, a set of sufficient conditions is established to guarantee that the MCAVSs achieve the desired lag formation under the proposed protocol. Notably, Zeno behavior is rigorously excluded by demonstrating that successive triggering intervals have a positive lower bound, ensuring physically realizable control updates. Finally, two numerical simulation studies verify the effectiveness, communication efficiency, and delay robustness of the proposed control method. This study presents a novel integration of lag formation and distributed event-triggering mechanisms tailored for real-world MCAVS scenarios in contrast to existing event-triggered and lag consensus approaches, enabling both theoretical stability and practical implementability.