Tractor Platooning System on Sloping Terrain at Low Speed
This article presents the development of a two-tractor platooning system on sloping terrain. A reference course for the following tractor was dynamically created from the position points of the leading tractor and subsequently processed by the least squares fitting method to filter out some noise. A path-tracking controller composed of the feedforward and feedback component elements was employed to guide the following tractor along the reference course. Field tests were conducted on an 11° sloping meadow. The results indicated that the following tractor tracked the leading one successfully, with mean and RMS lateral deviations of less than 0.028 and 0.078 m, respectively, at travel speed of 0.5 m s-1 on sloping terrain.