Spatiotemporal Tube-Based Safety-Certificate for Autonomous Navigation of Articulated Vehicles
2026-08-14 • Robotics
Robotics
AI summaryⓘ
The authors developed a new way to help big trucks with trailers drive themselves safely on narrow roads. They created a plan that keeps the truck and all its trailers within the road limits by predicting their movements and making small allowed adjustments. This method uses the physics of how the truck and trailers move together to make a safe path. They tested their plan using a computer simulation with a truck and trailer navigating a tricky route.
articulated vehiclesautonomous navigationtractor-trailerspatiotemporal tubekinematicssway constraintspath planningroad corridorAutomated Guided Vehiclesroute safety
Authors
Mohd. Faizuddin Faruqui, Ratnangshu Das, Ravi Kumar L, Pushpak Jagtap
Abstract
Articulated vehicles are the workhorses of freight transportation, and their autonomous navigation is challenging. Their physical characteristics and motion constraints pose significant challenges in manoeuvring these vehicles on narrow routes. This paper presents a spatiotemporal tube-based approach to plan autonomous navigation of vehicles like tractor semi-trailers, truck/ tractor trailers, towing Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs), and road trains. This planning approach provides a certified path plan for the truck or tractor, ensuring that the towed series of trailers always remains within the road corridor, limited by permissible corrections. The planning leverages the kinematics of the linked elements along with sway constraints to arrive at a safe tube for the actuated prime mover. We modify the spatiotemporal tube using permissible corrections to provide a route safety certificate to the vehicle for the given route. The proposed planning method is verified on a truck-trailer navigation simulation for a complex route.