The wireless communication used by vehicles in collaborative vehicle platoons is vulnerable to cyber-attacks, which threaten their safe operation. To address this issue we propose a topology-switching coalitional model predictive control (MPC) method based on a reduced order unknown input observer which detects and isolates the cyber-attacks, so that the attacked communication links can be disabled by means of a topology switch. Also, the MPC controller is designed to guarantee robustness against undetected attacks and the increase of uncertainty derived from disabling communication links. The proposed control method also conforms to a relaxed string stability condition and is guaranteed to be safe against crashes.

This paper discusses the design, implementation and flight testing of an incremental Backstepping (IBS) based manual flight control law with angular accelerometer (AA) feedback. The main advantages of incremental control laws are that they only require a partial model of the system and are of low complexity. Incremental control laws for aircraft rotational motion, however, need angular acceleration measurements to compute the control increments. Previously, estimates based on angular rate measurements were used for this. The newly implemented AA feedback is expected to improve the performance of the controller by decreasing the sensor delay. The manual control laws command roll rate/angle, vertical load factor, and side slip angle and have been implemented on a Cessna Citation II aircraft, equipped with an experimental fly-by-wire system. The IBS based control law has an integrated integral control term and uses Pseudo Control Hedging to handle actuator saturations. The IBS based control law is shown to have highly satisfactory performance in flight. Test manoeuvres included standard roll and load factor commands and asymmetric thrust handling. Robustness to model mismatch has been compared in a nonlinear simulation for the controllers with and without AA feedback. In general, the AA feedback improved the tolerance to mismatch substantially.