Model-Based Trailer-Sway Suppression for Autonomous Passenger Vehicles

Key points

• The resulting loss of vertical load at the tow vehicle's rear axle diminishes the lateral tire force available there and degrades yaw stability of the coupled system, admitting a divergent lateral oscillation of the trailer known as trailer sway.1
• This work develops a linear state-space model of the yaw-plane dynamics of a light vehicle-trailer combination, parameterized to expose tongue load as an explicit stability-determining quantity.1
• Results show a significant decrease in trailer oscillation when controlling a given vehicle's steering with an LQR using tow-vehicle IMU and LiDAR data.1
• These findings indicate that LQR controlled anti-sway systems are a viable control method for future autonomous vehicles.1

Sources (1)

• [1]Model-Based Trailer-Sway Suppression for Autonomous Passenger Vehicles
  arXiv (AI, ML, NLP, CV, robotics, multi-agent) · Oct 11, 04:29 PM

  Trailer sway is a persistent contributor to severe crashes among light passenger vehicles towing trailers, yet it remains largely unaddressed by the autonomous vehicle systems now entering this new era of automation.

  The resulting loss of vertical load at the tow vehicle's rear axle diminishes the lateral tire force available there and degrades yaw stability of the coupled system, admitting a divergent lateral oscillation of the trailer known as trailer sway.

Extractive summary: sentences quoted from the sources.