Some Properties of the General n-Trailer
Claudio Altafini
International Journal of Control , vol. 74, n. 4, p. 409-424, March 2001.
If some of the trailers of the so-called n-trailer system are
connected via a kingpin
hitch, the kinematic model of the system is more complicated that in
the standard case.
However, something can still be said about the structural properties
of the system, like controllability.
The more complicated equations can be interpreted in terms of
virtual steering wheels placed on the off-axle joints with steering
angle which is a nonlinear feedback from the original configuration
state.
Quite remarkably, the extra singularities of the system have an
explanation in terms of these virtual steering wheels.
This is also sufficient to assert that the general n-trailer problem
can be embedded into the coresponding multisteering n-trailer system.
The multi-chained form available for this last system can be recovered
also for the general n-trailer if we replace the extra steering
inputs with the aforementioned feedback loops.
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