By employing selective reasoning for wheel placement on uneven terrain, planning systems generate safer trajectories that reduce overall mission risk by preventing high-centering and excessive wheel jolt, and therefore expand an autonomous vehicle’s mission portfolio by enabling them to navigate previously untraversable terrain. We show successful wheel placement reasoning in a diverse set of environments, including unimproved roads and expeditionary scenarios. We quantify the performance improvement by measuring ride safety measures (vertical acceleration and underbody clearance) and the number of vehicle collisions in a boulder corridor test environment.

Date Published: 5 May 2017
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 10195, Unmanned Systems Technology XIX, 101950H (5 May 2017); doi: 10.1117/12.2266990

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 10195:
Unmanned Systems Technology XIX
Robert E. Karlsen; Douglas W. Gage; Charles M. Shoemaker; Hoa G. Nguyen, Editor(s)