Dynamic and Static Simulators for Wheeled Vehicles

Terrain adaptive wheeled vehicles offer great promise for locomotion on rugged terrain. In order to properly design terrain adaptive vehicles or control schemes for such vehicles, one needs an effective simulator. Many simulators are based on detailed dynamic analysis. Featherstone's method of articulated inertias makes such dynamic simulators reasonably efficient. However, rover vehicles often operate at low speeds that make the dynamic analysis unnecessary. A simpler approach is to use only velocity and position information to obtain the next state. Simulation on rugged terrain requires the program to account for gravitational and contact forces. An algorithm using potential energy methods is proposed as an alternate rough terrain simulator.