scholarly journals Traversability Assessment and Trajectory Planning of Unmanned Ground Vehicles with Suspension Systems on Rough Terrain

Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (20) ◽  
pp. 4372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Zhang ◽  
Yi Yang ◽  
Mengyin Fu ◽  
Meiling Wang

This paper presents a traversability assessment method and a trajectory planning method. They are key features for the navigation of an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) in a non-planar environment. In this work, a 3D light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensor is used to obtain the geometric information about a rough terrain surface. For a given SE(2) pose of the vehicle and a specific vehicle model, the SE(3) pose of the vehicle is estimated based on LiDAR points, and then a traversability is computed. The traversability tells the vehicle the effects of its interaction with the rough terrain. Note that the traversability is computed on demand during trajectory planning, so there is not any explicit terrain discretization. The proposed trajectory planner finds an initial path through the non-holonomic A*, which is a modified form of the conventional A* planner. A path is a sequence of poses without timestamps. Then, the initial path is optimized in terms of the traversability, using the method of Lagrange multipliers. The optimization accounts for the model of the vehicle’s suspension system. Therefore, the optimized trajectory is dynamically feasible, and the trajectory tracking error is small. The proposed methods were tested in both the simulation and the real-world experiments. The simulation experiments were conducted in a simulator called Gazebo, which uses a physics engine to compute the vehicle motion. The experiments were conducted in various non-planar experiments. The results indicate that the proposed methods could accurately estimate the SE(3) pose of the vehicle. Besides, the trajectory cost of the proposed planner was lower than the trajectory costs of other state-of-the-art trajectory planners.

2015 ◽  
Vol 237 ◽  
pp. 195-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Bartnicki ◽  
Tomasz Muszyński ◽  
Arkadiusz Rubiec

More often Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV) support or replace human in dangerous tasks performing. Usually this operations are realizing in hard conditions in rough terrain. UGVs effectively use determines its ability to obstacle negotiating, to reach high adhesion force, drawbar pull and extra longitudinal and lateral stability of UGV. Variety missions determining of use in UGVs reconfigurable and control suspension system. It is able to meet this requirement thanks to use hydropneumatic components in them suspension system. However currently it is very hard to developed characteristic of such a suspension systems. In literature there is no clear guidelines for suspension systems of teleoperated UGVs. This paper presents results of hydropneumatic suspension system research on heavy UGV.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Hebisch ◽  
Sven Jackisch ◽  
Dieter Moormann ◽  
Dirk Abel

2018 ◽  
Vol 06 (04) ◽  
pp. 251-266
Author(s):  
Phillip J. Durst ◽  
Christopher T. Goodin ◽  
Cindy L. Bethel ◽  
Derek T. Anderson ◽  
Daniel W. Carruth ◽  
...  

Path planning plays an integral role in mission planning for ground vehicle operations in urban areas. Determining the optimum path through an urban area is a well-understood problem for traditional ground vehicles; however, in the case of autonomous unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), additional factors must be considered. For an autonomous UGV, perception algorithms rather than platform mobility will be the limiting factor in operational capabilities. For this study, perception was incorporated into the path planning process by associating sensor error costs with traveling through nodes within an urban road network. Three common perception sensors were used for this study: GPS, LIDAR, and IMU. Multiple set aggregation operators were used to blend the sensor error costs into a single cost, and the effects of choice of aggregation operator on the chosen path were observed. To provide a robust path planning ability, a fuzzy route planning algorithm was developed using membership functions and fuzzy rules to allow for qualitative route planning in the case of generalized UGV performance. The fuzzy membership functions were then applied to several paths through the urban area to determine what sensors were optimized in each path to provide a measure of the UGV’s performance capabilities. The research presented in this paper shows the impacts that sensing/perception has on ground vehicle route planning by demonstrating a fuzzy route planning algorithm constructed by using a robust rule set that quantifies these impacts.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
pp. 0
Author(s):  
Yi Cui ◽  
Xintong Fang ◽  
Gaoqi Liu ◽  
Bin Li

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been extensively studied to complete the missions in recent years. The UAV trajectory planning is an important area. Different from the commonly used methods based on path search, which are difficult to consider the UAV state and dynamics constraints, so that the planned trajectory cannot be tracked completely. The UAV trajectory planning problem is considered as an optimization problem for research, considering the dynamics constraints of the UAV and the terrain obstacle constraints during flight. An hp-adaptive Radau pseudospectral method based UAV trajectory planning scheme is proposed by taking the UAV dynamics into account. Numerical experiments are carried out to show the effectiveness and superior of the proposed method. Simulation results show that the proposed method outperform the well-known RRT* and A* algorithm in terms of tracking error.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 143 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Md. Shehab Uddin ◽  
Fazlur Rashid

Abstract The slant angle plays a crucial role in the flow property of hatchback ground vehicles. An optimum slant angle is obligatory for better handling the ground vehicles when fitted with a rear wing. In this regard, the variation of time-averaged flow properties around a wing-attached hatchback ground vehicle (Ahmed body) due to a variable slant angle is accessed by this paper. The design includes a scaled Ahmed body as a reference ground vehicle and a rear wing with NACA 0018 profile. The computational studies are executed with Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes based k-epsilon turbulence model with nonequilibrium wall function. The vehicle's model is scaled to 75% of the actual model, and analyses are conducted with Reynolds number 2.7 × 106. After the study, it is observed that a 15 deg slant angle is the critical angle for the wing attached state in which the drag coefficient is maximum. After this angle, a sudden reduction of coefficients is observed, where 25 deg is critical for without wing condition. Besides this, the two counter-rotating horseshoe vortices in the separation bubble and side edge c-pillar vortices also behave differently due to the wing's presence. The turbulent kinetic energy variation and the variation in coefficients of surface pressure are also affected by the rear wing attachment. This paper will assist in finding the optimum slant angle for hatchback ground vehicles in the presence of a rear wing. Thus the study will help in increasing stability and control for hatchback ground vehicles.


Author(s):  
Mostafa Salama ◽  
Vladimir V. Vantsevich

Studies of the tire-terrain interaction have mostly been completed on vehicles with steered wheels, but not much work has been done regarding skid-steered Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV). This paper introduces a mathematical model of normal and longitudinal dynamics of a UGV with four skid-steered pneumatic tire wheels. Unlike the common approach, in which two wheels at each side are treated as one wheel (i.e., having the same rotational speeds), all four wheels in this study are independently driven. Thus the interaction of each tire with deformable terrain is introduced as holonomic constraints. The stress-strain characteristics for tire-soil interaction are analyzed based on modern Terramechanics methods and then further used to determine the circumferential wheel forces of the four tires. Contributions of three components of each tire circumferential force to tire slippages are modeled and analyzed when the tire normal loads vary during vehicle straight-line motion. The considered tire-soil characteristics are mathematically reduced to a form that allows condensing the computational time for on-line computing tire-terrain characteristics. Additionally, rolling resistance of the tires is analyzed and incorporated in the UGV dynamic equations. Moreover, the paper describes the physics of slip power losses in the tire-soil interaction of the four tires and applies it to small skid-steered UGV. This study also formulates an optimization problem of the minimization of the power losses in the tire-soil interactions due to the tire slippage.


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