Optimal Dynamic Output Feedback Designs for Backing-up Control of a Vehicle with Triple Trailers

This paper presents dynamic output feedback control designs for discrete Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy systems. A dynamic output feedback controller is constructed based on the concept of dynamic parallel distributed compensation (DPDC). Design conditions for optimal dynamic feedback control are obtained in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). In application to a vehicle with triple trailers setup, we utilize the optimal design conditions to avoid the jack-knife phenomenon. Our results demonstrate that the optimal dynamic output feedback design effectively achieves the backing up control of the vehicle with triple trailers while avoiding the jackknife phenomenon. More importantly, we demonstrate that the designed optimal control can achieve the backing up control without two potentiometers that were employed to measure the relative angles (of a vehicle with triple trailers) in our previous experiments.