Design and validation of a robust active trailer steering system for multi-trailer articulated heavy vehicles

Multi-trailer articulated heavy vehicles (MTAHVs) are increasingly used around the world due to their economic and environmental benefits. However, MTAHVs exhibit poor maneuverability and low lateral stability, which may lead to fatal traffic accidents. Given the safety risks, it is necessary to solve the steering and stability problems of MTAHVs before they are safely mass deployed on our roads. To this end, active trailer steering (ATS) based on the linear quadratic regulator (LQR) technique has been explored. The LQR-based ATS demonstrates improved maneuverability and enhanced lateral stability. In the ATS design, the vehicle and operating parameters are assumed constant. Thus, it is natural to question the robustness of the ATS in presence of vehicle and operating parameter uncertainties. To address the problem, this paper proposes a robust ATS system. The robust ATS controller is designed using a linear matrix inequality (LMI) based LQR method. In the design, both vehicle and steering actuator parameter uncertainties are considered; to enhance the robustness of the ATS, the weighting matrices of the proposed controller are optimized. The robust controller is applied to an A-Train Double, one type of MTAHV. The effectiveness of the robust ATS is demonstrated using numerical and hardware-in-the-loop real-time simulations.