SIMULATION OF SNOW TEXTURE FOR AUTOMOMOUS VEHICLE NUMERICAL MODELING

To advance development of the off-road autonomous vehicle technology, software simulations are often used as virtual testbeds for vehicle operation. However, this approach requires realistic simulations of natural conditions, which is quite challenging. Specifically, adverse driving conditions, such as snow and ice, are notoriously difficult to simulate realistically. The snow simulations are important for two reasons. One is mechanical properties of snow, which are important for vehicle-snow interactions and estimation of route drivability. The second one is simulation of sensor responses from a snow surface, which plays a major role in terrain classification and depends on snow texture. The presented work describes an overview of several approaches for realistic simulation of snow surface texture. The results indicate that the overall best approach is the one based on the Wiener–Khinchin theorem, while an alternative approach based on the Cholesky decomposition is the second best.

Citation: S. Vecherin, A. Meyer, J. Desmond, K. Dunn, B. Quinn, T. Letcher, M. Parker, “Simulation of Snow Roughness for Autonomous Vehicle Numerical Modeling,” In Proceedings of the Ground Vehicle Systems Engineering and Technology Symposium (GVSETS), NDIA, Novi, MI, Aug. 16-18, 2022.