Assistance controller for driving backwards and parking an articulated vehicle

Driving backwards and parking articulated vehicles represent a hard procedure also for skilled drivers. If a vehicle is semi-automated in a way that a computer can command the steering wheel, a driver assistance system may help the conductor to perform such maneuvers easily. This work presents a solution for this problem. A self constructed prototype was developed to analyze the effectiveness of the proposed control strategies that include a stabilizing controller for the joint angle and a path tracking controller. The results show that the stabilizing controller permits an untrained driver to steer the vehicle backwards by setting up the joint angle reference signal with an external human machine interface while the path tracking controller allows the vehicle to follow a predetermined route autonomously.