Kinematics and Path Following Control of an Articulated Drum Roller

Automatic navigation of an articulated drum roller, which is an articulated steering type vehicle widely used in the construction industry, is highly expected for operation cost reduction and improvement of work efficiency. In order to achieve the path following control, considering that its steering system is articulated steering and two frames are articulated by an active revolute joint, a kinematic model and an error dynamic state-space equation of an articulated drum roller are proposed. Besides, a state-feedback control law based on Lyapunov stability theory is also designed, which can be proved to achieve the purpose of control by the analysis of stability. What’s more, to evaluate the performance of the proposed method, simulation under the MATLAB/Simulink and experiments using positioning algorithm and errors correction at the uneven construction site are performed, with initial displacement error (−1.5 m), heading error (−0.11 rad) and steering angle (−0.19 rad). Finally, simulation and experimental results show that the errors and steering angle can decrease gradually, and converge to zero with time. Meanwhile, the control input is not saturated. An articulated drum roller can lock into a desired path with the proposed method in uneven fields.