  Cooperative adaptive cruise control presents an opportunity to improve road
transportation through increase in road capacity and reduction in energy use
and accidents. Clever design of control algorithms and communication systems is
required to ensure that the vehicle platoon is stable and meets desired safety
requirements. In this paper, we propose a centralized model predictive
controller for a heterogeneous platoon of vehicles to reach a desired platoon
velocity and individual inter-vehicle distances with driver-selected headway
time. As a novel concept, we allow for interruption from a human driver in the
platoon that temporarily takes control of their vehicle with the assumption
that the driver will, at minimum, obey legal velocity limits and the physical
performance constraints of their vehicle. The finite horizon cost function of
our proposed platoon controller is inspired from the infinite horizon design.
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first platoon controller that
integrates human-driven vehicles. We illustrate the performance of our proposed
design with a numerical study, demonstrating that the safety distance,
velocity, and actuation constraints are obeyed. Additionally, in simulation we
illustrate a key property of string stability where the impact of a disturbance
is reduced through the platoon.
