The development of an innovative system, aimed to provide an electronic link between two heavy vehicles was the main issue of the Promote-Chauffeur Project. Such a novel approach, baptised as the Tow-Bar function, has been successfully applied in two demonstrative IVECO trucks, within this project framework. The first vehicle, called leading (abbr. LV) is driven conventionally by a driver, whereas the second vehicle, called towed (TV) follows driverless LV, automatically. The full automatic drive of the TV is provided acting to the power management through brake and engine control, in order to maintain automatically small spacing distance between two vehicles and to an electronically commanded steering device, in order to follow automatically the trajectory traced by the LV. A video camera sensor provides information with regard to the relative co-ordinates between trucks, whereas a radio communication system ensures the information exchanged between two vehicles; no other special sensors w.r.t a normal production vehicle was requested. A robust design approach have been pursued for the control design providing an opportune controller structure which has been implemented on two IVECO trucks. Exhaustive field tests have been carried out with Tow-Bar system that evidenced the robustness of the controlled system and the validity of the approach as a promising way for traffic scenario optimisation.
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