DEVELOPMENT OF TEST ENVIRONMENTS FOR REVERSE ASSIST FUNCTIONS AS APPLIED TO AN A-DOUBLE VEHICLE COMBINATION

Paper in proceeding, 2021

High-capacity transport vehicles reduce costs and improve efficiency. Long vehicle combinations such as an A-double combination vehicle (Tractor + semitrailer + dolly + semitrailer) improve transportation efficiency but they are extremely difficult to manoeuvre in tight spaces and in the reverse direction. This document summarizes developing environments to test reverse assist functions as applied to the A-double combination vehicle. These
environments create a rapid prototyping platform consisting of a virtual and a scaled environment to test and validate controller concepts. The behaviour of the plant model in the virtual environment, the scaled vehicle model and the plant model in VTM (Volvo Truck Model) are studied and compared. A proportional controller is developed to test the environments and evaluate the process of concept development using the rapid prototype platform. The controller performance is evaluated and a possibility of incorporating integral controller is discussed.