Trajectory tracking for agricultural tractor based on improved fuzzy sliding mode control

Trajectory tracking is one of the key technologies for tractor automatic navigation. Its main purpose is to adjust the steering mechanism of the tractor to follow the planned trajectory. Thus, in this paper a trajectory tracking control system is designed for an agricultural tractor with the electric power steering mechanism. A DC brush motor is added on the steering column of the tractor and the hardware circuits for the steering controller are designed to control the front wheel angel. The three degrees of freedom model of the tractor is established, and a trajectory tracking control system is proposed including a fuzzy sliding mode controller and a steering angle tracking controller designed according to the internal mode control and minimized sensitivity theory. The effectiveness of the designed trajectory tracking control system is demonstrated by simulation analyses in reference to the planed trajectory.