Advanced Autonomous Vehicle Design for Severe Environments

Book excerpt: Classical vehicle dynamics, which is the basis for manned ground vehicle design, has exhausted its potential for providing novel design concepts to a large degree. At the same time, unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) dynamics is still in its infancy and is currently being developed using general analytical dynamics principles with very little input from actual vehicle dynamics theory. This technical book presents outcomes from the NATO Advanced Study Institute (ASI) ‘Advanced Autonomous Vehicle Design for Severe Environments’, held in Coventry, UK, in July 2014. The ASI provided a platform for world class professionals to meet and discuss leading-edge research, engineering accomplishments and future trends in manned and unmanned ground vehicle dynamics, terrain mobility and energy efficiency. The outcomes of this collective effort serve as an analytical foundation for autonomous vehicle design. Topics covered include: historical aspects, pivotal accomplishments and the analysis of future trends in on- and off-road manned and unmanned vehicle dynamics; terramechanics, soil dynamic characteristics, uncertainties and stochastic characteristics of vehicle-environment interaction for agile vehicle dynamics modeling; new methods and techniques in on-line control and learning for vehicle autonomy; fundamentals of agility and severe environments; mechatronics and cyber-physics issues of agile vehicle dynamics to design for control, energy harvesting and cyber security; and case studies of agile and inverse vehicle dynamics and vehicle systems design, including optimisation of suspension and driveline systems. The book targets graduate students, who desire to advance further in leading-edge vehicle dynamics topics in manned and unmanned ground vehicles, PhD students continuing their research work and building advanced curricula in academia and industry, and researchers in government agencies and private companies.