SIMULATION-BASED PROTOTYPING OF STABILITY CONTROL CONCEPTS FOR HIGH-SPEED TELEOPERATION OF HEAVY VEHICLES

Teleoperated ground vehicles are an integral part of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps long range vision and a key transition technology for fully autonomous vehicles. However, the combination of marginally-stable vehicle dynamics and limited perception are a key challenge facing teleoperation of such platforms at higher speeds. New technologies for enhancing operator perception and automatically detecting and mitigating rollover risk are needed to realize sufficient safety and performance in these applications. This paper presents three rollover mitigation concepts for high speed teleoperation of heavy tactical vehicles, including model-predictive warning, negative obstacle avoidance, and reactive brake controls. A modeling and simulation approach was used to evaluate these concepts within the Autonomous Navigation Virtual Environment Laboratory (ANVEL). Vehicle models for both the M1078 cargo truck and RG-31 MRAP were used throughout concept evaluation over terrain ranging from urban highway to off-road conditions with more complex topography.