Trajectory Control for a Trailer Towed by an Agricultural Vehicle (Part 2) - Field Experiment of the Developed Trajectory Control

摘要

A trajectory controller for a trailer proposed in Part I was tested by using an actual-size autoomous tractor and a trailer. A dead reckoning method was used for estimating the position of the tractor-trailer system. The experiment was conducted on a concrete surface. The experimental results showed that the feed-forward controller could not navigate the trailer to the given destination in backward movement, while the proposed feedback control could stabilize the system and guide it to that destination successfully. Performance of the feedbacks designed by the pole-placement technique and the optimal control method were compared. No significant difference in the final positional error was observed between the two feedback types tested. However, the maximum displacements in position that occurred during backward parallel travel from the origin to (8, 3) m in Cartesian coordinates were 14cm using the pole-placement controller and 9cm using the optimal controller. These results indicated that the feedback equipped with the optimal control showed the better trajectory tracking performance.