Control of Nonholonomic Electrically-Driven Tractor-Trailer Wheeled Robots based on Adaptive Partial Linearization

Abstract

Wheeled Mobile Robots (WMRs) are simple, easy to move on hard and level terrain and can be controlled effectively. Due to these merits, many researchers have studied the challenges of WMRs. To improve the payload transportation capability of wheeled vehicles, one or several platform, named as trailer, may towed to a tractor wheeled platform. In the current paper, for the first time, the motion control of such tractor trailer systems is addressed while the actuator dynamics is considered. Toward this goal, the system kinematics and dynamics will be derived and will be coupled to its actuators model. To control the considered nonholonomic system, the technique of input-output feedback linearization along with look-ahead point notion will be utilized. Besides, some of the imprecise parameters in the proposed model-based controller are identified in an on-line manner. The obtained computer simulation results support the soundness of the proposed controller.