Path planning and path following control of all-wheel steering vehicle with dual modular chassis

Abstract: A large-scale logistics transport vehicle composed of two four-wheel drive and four-wheel steering skateboard chassis is investigated in this paper. This unmanned vehicle with dual-modular chassis (VDUC) is suitable for transporting varying size of goods. The two chassis can be used jointly or driving separately as needed, which enhancing the reconfigurability of transport vehicle. Considering the road environment uncertainty and the rollover safety problem associated with large transport vehicle, this paper proposes the path planning of VDUC using the APF+MPC while incorporating the rollover stability index. Due to the independent operation of the two modular chassis, based on the hierarchical control approach, the path following controller of the two modular chassis are designed separately according to the vehicle’s planned path. Distributed model predictive control is applied to coordinate the front and rear modular chassis, thus it can realize the path following for the VDUC. A multi-body model of VDUC is built in Matlab/Simscape, and its path planning and tracking control are simulated in specific obstacle avoidance scenario. Simulation results demonstrate that the VDUC can avoid obstacles with smaller lateral displacement error while maintaining roll stability along the planned path, which shows that the proposed motion planning framework is suitable for the VDUC’s safe and efficient operation. Keywords: modular chassis, path planning, rollover stability, DMPC, path planning