Resilient Control and Leader Switching for Autonomous Vehicle Platoons Under DoS Attacks

Abstract

Autonomous vehicle platoons depend on directed communication for coordination, but are highly susceptible to Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks that undermine stability and cooperation. This work addresses the challenging case in which both the leader and a follower are simultaneously subjected to DoS attacks. A resilient vehicular control strategy is proposed to detect, mitigate, and recover from such adversarial conditions. Attack detection is achieved through a divergence-based scheme that employs dual incremental timers to estimate the time-varying delay induced by the attack, using reference trajectories. Once the delay is quantified, a resilient controller is activated to restore consensus, regulate attacked vehicle dynamics, and ensure safety constraints. To preserve network functionality during prolonged disruptions, a switching mechanism reassigns the compromised leader as a follower and designates a new leader, thereby maintaining hierarchical structure and continuous guidance. The new leader is selected using a rule-based strategy that evaluates communication connectivity, spatial proximity, and motion similarity over short-horizon measurements relative to the former leader. Distributed control preserves consensus in the platoon under attack conditions. Simulation studies validate the proposed strategy, demonstrating its robustness and practical significance for secure platooning in intelligent transportation systems.