PHYSICALLY COOPERATING AUTONOMOUS GROUND VEHICLES

Off-road mobility for an individual autonomous ground vehicle (AGV) can be severely limited by extreme environments (such as muddy patches or steep cliffs in off-road terrain). However, when operating as a group, cooperation between the AGVs can be leveraged to overcome such limitations. Traditionally cooperation has been achieved through information sharing, enabling the AGVs to “avoid” the extreme environments. In this paper we propose to achieve such cooperation through physical energy sharing, where the AGVs can “recover” from these environment scenarios. Specifically, we propose the use of a robotic manipulator (RM) that connects a disabled or degraded AGV with an operational AGV. A fleet level controller is proposed. The AGVs and the RM are modeled in Modelica, and integrated with the controller to perform simulations. We demonstrate collaborative movement in two scenarios, namely crossing a muddy patch and climbing a steep cliff. In each scenario the individual vehicle fails to complete the mission when degraded, however the cooperative fleet succeeds, while also enabling the degraded AGV to regain operational status.

Citation: M. Ashley, D. McMullan, S. Gopalswamy, “Physically Cooperating Autonomous Ground Vehicles,” In Proceedings of the Ground Vehicle Systems Engineering and Technology Symposium (GVSETS), NDIA, Novi, MI, Aug. 15-17, 2023.