Abstract
Recent research has developed experimentally verified dynamic models for skid-steered wheeled vehicles and used these results to derive a power model for this important class of all-terrain vehicles. As presented in this paper, based on the torque limitations of the vehicle motors, the dynamic model can be used to develop payload and terrain-dependent minimum turn radius constraints and the power model can be used to predict the energy consumption of a given trajectory. This paper uses these results along with sampling based model predictive optimization to develop an effective methodology for generating dynamically feasible, energy efficient trajectories for skid-steered autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs) and compares the resultant trajectories with those based on the standard distance optimal trajectories. The simulated and experimental results consider an AGV moving at a constant forward velocity on both wood and asphalt surfaces under various payloads. The results show that a small increase in the distance of a trajectory over the distance optimal trajectory can result in a dramatic savings in the AGV’s energy consumption. They also show that distance optimal planning can often produce trajectories that violate the motor torque constraints for skid-steered AGVs, which can result in poor navigation performance.
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A modular wooden surface was used because it can be attached to a variable slope in the authors’ lab for future experiments that focus on sloped surfaces.
This paper has supplementary downloadable material (Motion_planning.zip) showing the motion planning results for movement on both wood and asphalt surfaces as presented in this paper.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the collaborative participation in the Robotics Consortium sponsored by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory under the Collaborative Technology Alliance Program, Cooperative Agreement DAAD 19-01-2-0012. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Government purposes not withstanding any copyright notation thereon.
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Gupta, N., Ordonez, C. & Collins, E.G. Dynamically feasible, energy efficient motion planning for skid-steered vehicles. Auton Robot 41, 453–471 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-016-9550-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-016-9550-8