Experimental Evaluation of Minimum Swept-Path Control for Autonomous Reversing of Articulated Vehicles

This paper validates a newly devised control method for autonomous reversing of articulated vehicles called Minimum Swept Path Control (MSPC) [1], [2]. The theory in [1] can be applied to multiple trailers. The main linear optimal controller was implemented on full-sized tractor-semitrailer and B-double (twin trailer) combinations owned by Cambridge Vehicle Dynamic Consortium (CVDC). An inner-loop compensator using the PID method was developed and tuned to track the desired steer angle generated by the main controller. The experimental results are in agreement with the simulation results in [1], demonstrating that this approach can reduce the overall swept path of articulated vehicles during autonomous reversing significantly and guarantee accurate convergence to the terminal position of the manoeuvre.