Forward tracking of complex trajectories with non-Standard N-Trailers of non-minimum-phase kinematics avoiding a jackknife effect

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

It is a common conviction that forward motion control of tractor-trailer vehicles is a substantially simpler problem relative to reversing with trailers. This opinion may be misleading when considering the N-trailer vehicles moving forward with positive hitching offsets when a guidance point is located on a trailer. Due to the non-minimum-phase nature of vehicle kinematics, closing a feedback from a trailer posture can lead to the jackknife effect in this case. So far, there has been no solution to this problem for the N-trailers admitting trajectories of a varying curvature. To fill this gap, we propose a scalable and modular control strategy applicable to the N-trailer vehicles equipped solely with off-axle interconnections. The concept relies on a transformation of the control problem posed for the non-minimum-phase kinematics into a corresponding problem formulated for a virtual vehicle of minimum-phase kinematics, which can be solved by using the recently proposed cascade-like controller.