High precision control of agricultural equipment

Program Code: 1643

Objectives:

This PhD is a part of the project to develop robust control methodologies to precisely guide articulated off-road vehicles and attached trailers which are affected by slip. The significance in the research lies in the generic hybrid modelling approach to vehicle control, whereby the generic nature and relative simplicity of a kinematic model is beneficial in determining the trajectory tracking controller, yet the benefits of consideration of the vehicle's dynamics are also afforded without explicitly needing to know them. It is expected that a new class of non-linear control methodologies will be developed and experimentally verified, which deliver robust and precise trajectorytracking performance for slip affected vehicles.

Description of Work:

Obtaining velocity kinematic models of tractor-implement system with sideslip velocities

Obtaining input-output pairs for the dynamic model which satisfy passivity conditions

Design of controllers for the velocity kinematic that incorporate passive dynamic models

Implementation of the controller on the experimental tractor-trailer system

Contact:

A/Prof Hemanshu Pota h.pota@adfa.edu.au