Modified transpose Jacobian control of a tractor-trailer wheeled robot

Tractor-trailer wheeled robot (TTWR) is a modular robotic system that consists of a tractor module towing a trailer. Control of these systems started from motion aid facilities in human-driven vehicles, to fully autonomous mobile robots in recent years. The mobility of such highly nonlinear systems is restricted due to the presence of nonholonomic constraints of wheels, also the system severe underactuated nature. Trajectory tracking is one of the challenging problems focused in the context of Wheeled mobile robots (WMRs) that has been discussed in this paper. First, kinematic equations of TTWR are obtained. Then, reference trajectories for tracking problem are produced. Subsequently, a non-model-based controller based on Modified transpose jacobian (MTJ) method is designed to steer the TTWR asymptotically follow reference trajectories. Obtained simulation and experimental comparison results show the effectiveness of the proposed controller.