Implementation of Reversing Control on a Doubly Articulated Vehicle

Abstract

The problem of reversing vehicles with two trailers could be solved with a semi-autonomous assistance system for automatically steering the vehicle. In the literature found, no controllers have been implemented on a full-size vehicle with two trailers. In this paper, two simple path-tracking controllers are presented for automating the reversing of a “B-double” vehicle, consisting of a tractor and two trailers. One of the controllers is a heuristic “preview point” controller; the other uses a state feedback approach. The controllers steer the wheels on the front axle so as to stabilize the vehicle in reverse and control the path of the rearmost axle to follow a prescribed path. A tuning strategy is outlined where both controllers are tuned using the linear quadratic regulator and have the same closed-loop poles. The two controllers are implemented on a full-size B-double test vehicle. Experimental results are discussed, and the controller performances are evaluated against criteria. With the state feedback controller, the test vehicle was able to track target paths, consisting of a roundabout and a lane change, to within 50 mm.

A path planning and path‐following control framework for a general 2‐trailer with a car‐like tractor

“…However, if a more detailed reference path with full state information is available, this method is only using a subset of the available information and the control accuracy might be reduced. A similar approach for path tracking is also proposed in [55] for reversing a G2T with a car-like tractor which has been successfully demonstrated in practice.…”

“…The matrix inequalities in (42) are solved to show that the norm of the path-following error for the discrete-time switched system in (41), exponentially decays towards zero at the switching instantsx e [k]. By selecting 0 < µ < 1, the following SDP problem can be solved such that a feasible solution to (55) exists for the original motion primitive set P. This is because there exist short motion primitives of about 1 m that moves the vehicle either straight forwards or backwards. If these motion primitives are switched between, it is not possible to guarantee that the norm of the path-following error at the switching points will exponentially decay towards zero.…”

Camera-Based Articulation Angle Sensing for Heavy Goods Vehicles

“…Although LCVs can make use of existing infrastructure (though may be constrained to certain routes due to their length), wider adoption is limited by reduced manoeuvrability and potentially compromised high-speed stability due to the number of articulation points. Emerging technologies such as active trailer steering [5], [6], [7], autonomous reversing [8], combined braking and steering control [9], and anti-jackknife control [10] have been shown to improve performance in this regard, but wide-spread uptake has been limited by practical commercialisation constraints.…”

Minimum Swept-Path Control for Autonomous Reversing of a Tractor Semi-Trailer

“…To date, automatic reversing control strategies for heavy goods vehicles (HGV) have aimed to ensure that the rear-end of the vehicles exactly follows a specified path, irrespective of the motion of the rest of the combination [12]- [15]. The disadvantage with this approach is that the other parts of the vehicle, particularly the tractor unit, can experience large excursions from the nominal path, which can render those strategies impractical, as shown in Figure 1.…”