Design for physical structure of tractor-trailer mobile robot

Path planned for tractor-trailer mobile robot (TTMR) doesn't seem to be easily adapted to the case when the number of the trailers increases anti the repetitive path planning has to be introduced for the same transportation task. For this problem, this paper investigates the transient course and the steady state of the motion trajectories of the TTMR when the tractor moves along a circle path, based on the quantitative relation between which, a new design method to optimize the physical structure of variable structure TTMR is proposed. By adjusting the connecting parameters properly, we ensure that the transient deviations of the trailers from the path followed by the tractor will be less than the steady ones. In this way, the path planned for the TTMR can also be appropriate for the system with variable structure such that the application of TTMR in practice gets more and more possible. The simulations show the validity of our method.