Anti-Jackknifing Control of Tractor-Trailer Vehicles
Jackknifing is a phenomenon that can occur when Tractor-Trailer Vehicles are reversing, being induced by the fact that the Tractor and the Trailer naturally rotate in opposite directions, and can ultimately result in self-collision and in a loss of maneuverability. From a control perspective, we were able to frame this issue as the instability related to the internal dynamics of the system that arises while following a predefined Tractor trajectory.
To avoid the onset of Jackknifing when controlling an Autonomous Tractor-Trailer Vehicle in backward motions, we have developed a control scheme that is able to correct the nominal action to ensure that Jackknifing does not occur. An MPC controller is used to compute, at each instant, the least invasive action that satisfies a stability constraint on the unstable component of the dynamics to ensures the boundedness of the future trajectory.
- M. Beglini, T. Belvedere, L. Lanari, and G. Oriolo, “An Intrinsically Stable MPC Approach for Anti-Jackknifing Control of Tractor-Trailer Vehicles”, IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, vol. 27, no. 6, pp. 4417–4428, Dec. 2022. (pdf). DOI:10.1109/TMECH.2022.3154295.
Whole-body Control of Wheeled Inverted Pendulum Robots
Wheeled Inverted Pendulum Robots are naturally unstable systems that require balancing at all times. Their main advantage resides on the ability to perform faster motions than traditional Wheeled Mobile Robots while keeping a small footprint. Controlling such systems is challenging due to their underactuation, that makes the generation of stable motions nontrivial.
In this work, we proposed a Whole-body MPC controller that is able to generate fast dynamic motions for a WIP Robot with two arms. We use a particular terminal stability constraint that provides an effective condition to stabilize the system while allowing for short control horizons to aid in achieving real-time performance.
- M. Kanneworff, T. Belvedere, N. Scianca, F. M. Smaldone, L. Lanari, and G. Oriolo, “Task-Oriented Generation of Stable Motions for Wheeled Inverted Pendulum Robots”, in 2022 International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), May 2022, pp. 214–220. DOI:10.1109/ICRA46639.2022.9812317.