Enhancement of Automated Guided Vehicle System for Heavy Trucks

Current steering automation techniques are well serving most of the commonly used vehicles especially commercial cars, however those vehicles with small steering angle (SSA) such as heavy trucks would be the most difficult to apply these techniques to, as these vehicles have higher tendency to exhibit under-steer on curvature turns of the road. In this paper an automated guided vehicle (AGV) system is suggested to automate specific maneuvers for SSA vehicles, this system is based on conventional kinematics modeling and specially designed maneuvering trajectory for the concerned type of vehicles. Moreover as an application for this methodology, this research presents an automated parking system of SSA vehicle with innovative solution for the stubborn issue of curvy trajectories by converting them mathematically into linear ones. The operation principles of the designed path algorithm are explained with geometric logic interpretation, while output results are depicted using MATLAB simulation to verify the system advantages.