A Longitudinal Speed Controller For Autonomous Multi-Trailer Articulated Heavy Vehicles

This paper presents an automated longitudinal speed controller for multi-trailer articulated heavy vehicles (MTAHVs). A 6 degrees of freedom (DOF) yaw-plane vehicle model is generated to represent a MTAHV with the configuration of A-train double. A vehicle states prediction approach and a Mamdani fuzzy interface system are utilized to devise the automated driving controller for forward speed control of the MTAHV. Due to multiple articulation joints and heavy and long architectures, MTAHVs exhibit low high-speed lateral stability. They often experience amplified lateral motion of trailing units in transient curved path negotiations. Most of the speed planning schemes and control strategies introduced in the literature have been proposed for single unit vehicles. To enhance the automated speed control performance of the MTAHV, an anticipatory/compensatory lateral acceleration controller strategy considering the states of all the vehicle units and the MTAHV performance envelope is proposed. This speed controller distinguishes itself from others with several features. To evaluate the effectiveness of the innovative speed control strategy, co-simulations are carried out by combining the nonlinear A-train double model generated in TruckSim with an integrated controller designed in MATLAB/ SIMULINK.