THE MULTI-STEERING N-TRAILER SYSTEM - A CASE-STUDY OF GOURSAT NORMAL FORMS AND PROLONGATIONS

In this paper, wheeled mobile robots towing trailers are used as examp les of systems which can be converted into extended Goursat normal for m. For some configurations of this class of systems, a prolongation of the Pfaffian system is necessary before the Goursat form can be achie ved. The advantage of the Goursat form is that once the kinetic constr aints are in this normal form, the point-to-point path planning proble m can be solved in a straightforward way.