Control System Design of Four Wheeled Independent Steering Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGV)

Abstract

This paper four wheeled independent steering automatic guided vehicle (4WIS-AGV) is a developed AGV that has four wheeled configuration in which each wheel is steerable. Because of this wheel configuration, 4WIS-AGV can have higher maneuverability and flexibility in narrow working space. However, controlling the four wheeled independent steering AGV is not easy. Therefore, this paper proposes a control system to steer 4WIS-AGV. To do this task, the followings are done. First, the single track vehicle model is used to represent the 4WIS-AGV model. The single track vehicle model is obtained by reducing an ordinary four wheeled vehicle model to a two wheeled vehicle model with the wheels in the centerline of the vehicle. Second, backstepping control method is applied to make the 4WIS-AGV track a given path well. Finally, simulation is carried out to verify the effectiveness of the proposed controller in tracking the given path. The simulation results show that the proposed control system is capable of tracking the reference trajectory successfully.