As autonomous vehicles (AVs) and human-driven vehicles (HVs) are expected to share the road for the foreseeable future, understanding how to improve the stability of mixed-autonomy platoons is crucial. This paper introduces a novel adaptive control strategy tailored for a specific platoon configuration termed as “ \(1+n+1\) ”, consisting of a leading AV, n intervening vehicles, and a trailing AV. Utilizing vehicle-to-vehicle communication, the trailing AV adapts to real-time traffic states, thereby promoting overall platoon stability. Our analysis, grounded in Lyapunov theory, demonstrates that stabilizing only the trailing vehicle is sufficient to ensure the entire system reaches a stable state. To mitigate the negative effects of sensor and actuator uncertainties, we also introduce a corrective signal framework capable of nullifying adverse inputs. Numerical experiments validate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy in platoon control, which can also be adapted to other platoon configurations. Additionally, the performance of this strategy on macroscopic traffic flow is explored, suggesting substantial potential throughput increases compared with the benchmark strategy of Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC).
