Backing-Up Maneuvers of Autonomous Tractor-Trailer Vehicles using the Qualitative Theory of Nonlinear Dynamical Systems

Abstract

This paper presents an approach, based on the qualitative theory of nonlinear dynamical systems, for the analysis and design of control systems for autonomous articulated vehicles. In particular, backing-up maneuvers are considered. These maneuvers are dangerous because the vehicles tend to `jackknife' when the angle between the tractor and the trailer is greater than a certain value. This danger is increased when the actuators are saturated because they can cause a lack of controllability in the state space and control becomes complicated. The paper proposes a two-level control system with an orientation controller in the lower level and a look-ahead controller in the higher. In the paper, a general orientation feedback controller is presented. This control strategy represents a wide family of different nonlinear controllers and can be applied with different particular control laws. The paper applies the qualitative theory of nonlinear dynamical systems to study the stability of the control system. Thus, the stability of the system under some constraints is demonstrated. The paper includes both simulation and experimental results of the implementation on the Romeo 4R autonomous vehicle, which is a full-size autonomous electrical golf cart with a trailer.

3-D Path-Following Control for Steerable Needles With Fiber Bragg Gratings in Multi-Core Fibers

“…Finally, it is worth noting that the architecture proposed in this study and the look-ahead controller used as the HLC resemble some of the other robotic systems such as autonomous ground vehicles (e.g., autonomous tractors [47]) and underwater vehicles [48]. These systems also include an LLC to control the vehicle's maneuver.…”

Path tracking and stabilization for a reversing general 2-trailer configuration using a cascaded control approach

“…The work focuses on the stabilization of the internal angles but does not look into path tracking. This work presents results from the thesis [11], where results from [2] are used to stabilize the internal angles of the system and then a pure pursuit path tracking controller is designed for the stabilized system in a similar way as [12] and [13]. Finally we present an intuitive user interface that can be used to perform complex manoeuvres from a userdefined start position to a user-defined goal position.…”

An Intrinsically Stable MPC Approach for Anti-Jackknifing Control of Tractor-Trailer Vehicles

“…Works belonging to the first category include [2], where a feedback control scheme is proposed to drive a general (i.e., nonzero-hooked) one-trailer system along backward trajectories by transforming the control inputs of a virtual vehicle moving forward along the same trajectory; [3], which introduces a two-level trajectory tracking controller for a zerohooked one-trailer system; and [4], where the trajectory tracking problem is considered for a general n-trailer vehicle whose last trailer must track a linear/circular trajectory. More recent work includes [5], which addresses the problem by defining the last trailer as a virtual tractor, and [6], which proposes a curvature-based method for both forward and backward path following in the presence of sideslip.…”