Control of a unicycle-like robot with trailers using transverse function approach

The paper presents the application of a smooth kinematic algorithm to control multi-body vehicle which consists of the unicyclelike tractor with three trailers. The controller takes advantage of the transverse functions and properties of the IV-order two input chained system. The derivation of the algorithm is presented in details. In order to improve the performance of the controller in the real application a selected tuning techniques are discussed. The properties of the closed-loop control system are examined based on results of numerical simulations concerning the point stabilization and trajectory tracking tasks