Intelligent Technique Application for Autonomous Lateral Position Control of an Unmanned 4 Wheel Steered Snowplow Robotic Vehicle

Intelligent Technique Application for Autonomous Lateral Position Control of an Unmanned 4 Wheel Steered Snowplow Robotic Vehicle

This paper presents an intelligent control approach for lateral position control of an autonomous four wheel steered snowplowing robotic vehicle. The vehicle is built for removing snow on the highway. Dynamics of the vehicle is derived and linearized for LQR control. Lateral position is controlled by the LQR method first, then the neural network control technique is introduced to improve tracking performances under the presence of load. The feasibility of using four wheel steering control is investigated by simulation studies of lateral position tracking of the Ford F-250 truck model. Performances of a LQR control method and a neural network control method under virtual snowplowing situation are compared.