Predicting the dynamic behaviour of a planetary vehicle using physical modeling

This paper addresses the motion prediction problem of a planetary vehicle under the following hypotheses: the vehicle must be able to move on both, natural and hostile terrains, it must have the ability of selecting and applying several navigation strategies depending on the characteristics of the terrain, and it must be capable of showing complex behaviors derived by both, its sophisticated mechanical structure and the vehicle/terrain physical interactions. An original method to simulate the dynamic behavior of the vehicle (i.e., vehicle/terrain interactions, sliding or gripping effects...) when executing motions having the previous characteristics is presented. This method is based on the concept of physical modeling which has been initially developed in the field of computer graphics and man/machine communication. The basic idea is to consider that motions and/or deformations of physical objects result from the application of physical laws involving a set of forces whose application points depend on the intrinsic structure of the interacting objects.