Active Control on Path Following and Lateral Stability for Truck–Trailer Combinations

Abstract

Low-speed path following and high-speed lateral stability are vital performance for safety driving of truck–trailer combinations (TTCs). These two performance can be effectively improved by active trailer steering (ATS) system. This paper investigates low-speed path following and high-speed lateral stability for TTCs with ATS system. First of all, the driver model and yaw plane model of TTC are proposed to capture the optimal control performance index. Next, a method based on shift register operation is proposed to deduce the path-following off-tracking (PFOT) of TTC. Then, two controllers of path following and lateral stability are designed, respectively. Finally, numerical experiments on the directional performance of TTC are carried out under the low-speed $90{^{\circ }}$ intersection turn and $360{^{\circ }}$ roundabout maneuvre, and the high-speed single lane-change maneuvre. The numerical results demonstrate that the TTC with ATS system improves both low-speed path following and high-speed lateral stability compared with the baseline TTC without ATS system, and the designed controllers have good performance on reducing PFOT and RWA in any maneuvre conditions.