Motion Planning and Control of a Tractor with a Steerable Trailer Using Differential Flatness

Abstract

This paper presents a methodology for trajectory planning and tracking control of a tractor with a steerable trailer based on the system's dynamic model. The theory of differential flatness is used as the basic approach in these developments. Flat outputs are found that linearize the system's dynamic model using dynamic feedback linearization, a subclass of differential flatness. It is demonstrated that this property considerably simplifies motion planning and the development of controller Simulation results are presented in the paper, which show that the developed controller has the desirable performance with exponential stability.