A feedback control scheme for reversing a truck and trailer vehicle

A control scheme is proposed for stabilization of backward driving along simple paths for a miniaturized vehicle composed of a truck and a two-axle trailer. The paths chosen are straight lines and arcs of circles. When reversing, the truck and trailer under examination can be modeled as an unstable nonlinear system with state and input saturations. The simplified goal of stabilizing along a trajectory (instead of a point) allows us to consider a system with controllable linearization. Still, the combination of instability and saturations makes the task impossible with a single controller. In fact, the system cannot be driven backward from all initial states because of the jack-knife effects between the parts of the multibody vehicle; it is sometimes necessary to drive forward to enter into a specific region of attraction. This leads to the use of hybrid controllers. The scheme has been implemented and successfully used to reverse the radio-controlled vehicle.