Control of an Articulated-Vehicle System Comprising Dual Multi-Axle Trailers

This paper presents a novel modeling approach of an articulated-vehicle system comprising dual multi-axle trailers which does not belong to conventional trailer systems such as multi-steering n-trailer and multi-steering general n trailer systems. In the new model, some existing mechanical elements are replaced with virtual counterparts, and furthermore, virtual mechanical elements are incorporated, facilitating the conversion of the kinematical equation of the articulated-vehicle system into a chained form. This paper also presents a control law, derived from the chained form, for enabling four manipulation points defined on the articulated-vehicle system to follow a single desired free-form curve path. The validity of the modeling approach and the control law is verified by experiments.