Hybrid stabilization of a car-trailer via chain form and integrator backstepping

A hybrid dynamic controller for stabilization of a car pulling one trailer to an arbitrary small neighborhood of the origin is presented. The design procedure is based on integrator backstepping techniques and relies on transforming the system equations into chained form. The hybrid strategy combines a trajectory tracking nonlinear control law until lateral and orientation errors reach a sufficiently small prescribed magnitude with a time-invariant stabilizer to bring to zero the longitudinal error. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller