New reference point for guiding an articulated vehicle

Deals with the control of an articulated vehicle. A new reference point for guiding an articulated vehicle is suggested and the equations of motion in terms of this point has been derived. Both the planning and tracking aspects of the control problem are analyzed. Using the proposed reference point the forward/backward maneuvers can be incorporated into the planning procedure in a natural way. The planning procedure is enhanced by adding an “on-the-spot folding” maneuver, that replaces the reversals of conventional algorithms. Using our proposed “intermediate” reference point we may handle by the same way the forward and backward portions of the path bypassing the numerical instability that arises in computing the segments with varying curvature assigned for backward motion. A position estimation scheme based on internal sensors (wheel encoders) is also discussed. Although this work was performed as part of a research project on automatic guidance of mining vehicles, many of its results have a wider area of application