Elisabeth Balcerak

Minimum Parking Maneuvers for Articulated Vehicles with One-Axle Trailers

The kinematic behavior of articulated vehicles is complex and hard to control. This coincides with the perception of unskilled drivers, e.g., when they back up their car and the attached caravan. An integrated semi-automated driving assistance system would be very convenient for such situations. The realization of a system for backup assistance raises questions ranging from the theory of kinematics to the human-machine interaction. In this paper we focus on the fundamental question of the minimum maneuver for parallel parking. This question is discussed from its theoretical background to the practical integration into a respective assistance system

Maneuver-based assistance for backing up articulated vehicles

The kinematic behavior of articulated vehicles is complex and hard to control. This coincides with the perception or unskilled drivers, e.g. when they back up their vehicle and the attached camping trailer. Typically, such situations are stressful and adequate forms of assistance would be experienced as a welcome relief. This paper proposes a simple but efficient assistance system which on one hand focusses on the kinematic properties of certain maneuvers and on the other hand is modularized in a way that it can be retrofitted to any articulated vehicle with one-axle trailer. The assistance system has been implemented in a real vehicle and first experiences are already available.

Präzise Fahrmanöver für Fahrzeuge im Gespann

Diese Arbeit beschaftigt sich mit der Kinematik von Gespannen. Dazu wird ein abstraktes Modell eines Gespanns entworfen und dessen Fahreigenschaften analytisch beschrieben. Die dabei abgeleiteten Ergebnisse sollen dazu dienen, die in einem Modell-Lkw mit Anhanger bereits eingesetzten Verfahren in der Weise zu verbessern, dass Ziele — vor allem ruckwarts — praziser und schneller angefahren werden konnen.

A generic method to determine space-saving corridor segments for trucks with one-axle trailer

In general, the generation of both admissible and collision-free paths for autonomous truck-trailer systems is considered as a sophisticated challenge within the field of motion planning. Therefore, we propose a planning concept that uses maneuvers as elementary planning components and thereby deals with both aspects at the same time. In order to ensure the collision-freedom of an admissible path, the space has to be determined that is allocated by the articulated vehicle, while tracking the path. Considering a truck-trailer system, this task is however challenging, since first, the orientation of the trailer in respect to the truck might change and second, the various tractrix curves of the trailers wheels and vertices are characterized by curvatures of different value and even different sign. In this paper, we present a method to determine the corridor segment which serves as a hull that completely encloses a truck-trailer system during a maneuver. The main benefit of the proposed method is based on its generic character that allows to apply the method to arbitrary trucks with one-axle trailer and to maneuvers of any type in order to generate space-saving corridor segments.

Assessing the maneuverability of tractor trailer systems in heavy goods transport

In recent years strong efforts have been made for assistance and automation of heavy goods vehicles. The major efforts focus on driver and driving assistance systems for a broad scope of use cases. Minor efforts have been spent for autonomous driving of heavy goods vehicles. Here the scope of application is limited to non-public traffic, e.g. logistics centers and factory grounds. Also the degree of autonomy is limited, typically to the same level as for AGVs following predefined trajectories. However, extending autonomous driving to logistics centers and factory grounds comes along with a variety of new challenges. An important one is discussed here and regards the maneuverability of vehicles with a high degree of nonholonomy on narrow grounds. In doing this a quantifiable measure of maneuverability has to be defined and applied to comparable heavy goods vehicles.