Path following bi-directional controller for articulated vehicles

Abstract

Docking or parking articulated vehicles is a difficult task which further becomes complex with increasing number of articulations, which can be arduous for even professional drivers. Driver’s limited view and perception coupled with divergent instability of articulated vehicles in reverse motion are the primary reasons of complexity of the maneuver. For such, a driver support system is developed using a path following controller based on a virtual tractor principle. This paper presents the control problem formulation together with brief descriptions of relevant components of the closed-loop. An optimization routine is also presented which can be used to tune the controller gains. A proof of concept is presented for a single articulated vehicle using simulations and a second proof of concept is demonstrated using scaled test setup, which also indicates that the presented controller can be implemented in full scale vehicle. Due to a generic description presented in this paper, the controller is flexible and can be extended for double articulated vehicles.