A Sliding Mode Observer Approach for Attack Detection and Estimation in Autonomous Vehicle Platoons using Event Triggered Communication

Platoons of autonomous vehicles are being investigated as a way to increase road capacity and fuel efficiency. Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) is one approach to controlling platoons longitudinal dynamics, which requires wireless communication between vehicles. In the present paper we use a sliding mode observer to detect and estimate cyber-attacks threatening such wireless communication. In particular we prove stability of the observer and robustness of the detection threshold in the case of event-triggered communication, following a realistic Vehicle-to-Vehicle network protocol.