Look-ahead path information based receding horizon control for backing-up tractor-trailer systems

On account of the backing-up tractor-trailer system with an off-axle connection, a mixed logical dynamics (MLD) approach and a receding horizon control (RHC) method have been addressed respectively for the purpose of modeling and control of such system. At first, Lyapunov theory is used to analyze the motion characteristics of the tractor-trailer system. Then, MLD approach is proposed to describe the kinematic of the tractor-trailer system. For the resulting MLD model, an extended cost function with quadratic form is addressed. To minimize the tracking error of the trailer, and smooth the behavior of the steering angle, an equivalent linear quadratic tracking problem is presented. In view of this problem, an explicit RHC controller is designed considering a look-ahead path information with finite horizon, by employing the multi-parametric mixed-integer quadratic programming (mp-MIQP) technique. Finally, the controller is evaluated through simulation, and achieves a desirable performance, even under the tracking of a non-smooth reference path.