Dynamic stability of off-road vehicles: Quasi-3D analysis

This paper presents a method to determine the stability of off-road vehicles moving on rough terrain. The measures of stability are defined as the maximum speed and acceleration under which the vehicle does not slide or tip over. To compute these stability measures, we propose a quasi 3D analysis by decomposing the vehicle dynamics into three separate planes: the yaw, pitch, and roll planes. In each plane, we compute the set of admissible speeds and acceleration for the planar vehicle model, contact model, and ground force constraints. The intersection of the admissible sets provides the total range of feasible speeds and accelerations along the vehicle's path, from which we obtain the stability margins. Numerical results for a vehicle traversing a simulated terrain demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.