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Introduction: Vehicle–terrain interaction for mobile robots
Author(s) -
Iagnemma Karl,
Martinet Philippe,
Wang Danwei
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of field robotics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.152
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1556-4967
pISSN - 1556-4959
DOI - 10.1002/rob.20331
Subject(s) - terrain , computer science , citation , field (mathematics) , world wide web , artificial intelligence , cartography , mathematics , geography , pure mathematics
The application of mobile robots to field environments has enabled significant advances in such diverse areas as agriculture, defense and security, planetary surface exploration, and mining. To successfully deploy a robot in an unstructured, outdoor environment, roboticists should consider the interaction of the robot and terrain. Often, this interaction is assumed to follow a simple Coulomb friction law, and the effects of such phenomena as wheel (or track, or foot) slippage and sinkage are ignored. Although such an approach may be sufficient for some applications, operation near a system’s performance limits—that is, at high speeds, or in challenging terrain— often requires more sophisticated analyses of robot–terrain interaction. This has implications for the system’s design, sensing subsystem, and estimation and control algorithms. The properties of terrain that can significantly influence robot performance include the following: