LATERAL CONTROL OF AN AUTOMATED TRUCK PLATOON COUPLED WITH MECHANICAL LINKS

Truck platooning system is that when some trucks are driven on a highway for a same direction, they move in a column. The leading truck is manually driven and others automatically follow at a very small distance. In this paper, a lateral control of the mechanically coupled truck platoon is proposed. A mechanically coupled platoon is controlled with relative positions of trucks, which are measured by sensors installed in links. The following trucks follow the same track as the leading truck. Using this method, this system can be actualized with no additional road infrastructure. The effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated by computer simulation and confirmed by an actual platoon of miniature trucks. For the covering abstract see ITRD E114174.