Active steering control based on preview theory for articulated heavy vehicles

This paper investigates the active steering control of the tractor and the trailer for the articulated heavy vehicle (AHV) to improve its high-speed lateral stability and low-speed path following. The four-degree-of-freedom (4-DOF) single track dynamic model of the AHV with a front-wheel steered trailer is established. Considering that the road information at the driver’s focus is the most clear and those away from the focus blurred, a new kind controller based on the fractional calculus, i.e., a focus preview controller is designed to provide the steering input for the tractor to make it travel along the desired path. In addition, the active steering controllers based on the linear quadratic regulator (LQR) and single-point preview controller respectively are also proposed for the trailer. However, the latter is designed on the basis of the articulation angle between the tractor and trailer, inspired by the idea of the driver’s single-point preview controller. Finally, the single lane change maneuver and 90(o) turn maneuver are carried out. And the simulation results show that compared with the single-point preview controller, the new kind preview controller for the tractor can have good high speed maneuvering stability and low speed path tracking ability by adjusting the fractional order of the controller. On this basis, three different AHVs with the same tractor are simulated and the simulation results show that the AHV whose trailer adopts the single-point preview controller has better high-speed lateral stability and low-speed path tracking than the AHV whose trailer adopts the LQR controller.