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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Han, Tyler, Liu, Alex, Li, Anqi, Spitzer, Alex, Shi, Guanya, Boots, Byron
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.12284
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author Han, Tyler
Liu, Alex
Li, Anqi
Spitzer, Alex
Shi, Guanya
Boots, Byron
author_facet Han, Tyler
Liu, Alex
Li, Anqi
Spitzer, Alex
Shi, Guanya
Boots, Byron
contents Terrain traversability in unstructured off-road autonomy has traditionally relied on semantic classification, resource-intensive dynamics models, or purely geometry-based methods to predict vehicle-terrain interactions. While inconsequential at low speeds, uneven terrain subjects our full-scale system to safety-critical challenges at operating speeds of 7--10 m/s. This study focuses particularly on uneven terrain such as hills, banks, and ditches. These common high-risk geometries are capable of disabling the vehicle and causing severe passenger injuries if poorly traversed. We introduce a physics-based framework for identifying traversability constraints on terrain dynamics. Using this framework, we derive two fundamental constraints, each with a focus on mitigating rollover and ditch-crossing failures while being fully parallelizable in the sample-based Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework. In addition, we present the design of our planning and control system, which implements our parallelized constraints in MPC and utilizes a low-level controller to meet the demands of our aggressive driving without prior information about the environment and its dynamics. Through real-world experimentation and traversal of hills and ditches, we demonstrate that our approach captures fundamental elements of safe and aggressive autonomy over uneven terrain. Our approach improves upon geometry-based methods by completing comprehensive off-road courses up to 22% faster while maintaining safe operation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2311_12284
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Model Predictive Control for Aggressive Driving Over Uneven Terrain
Han, Tyler
Liu, Alex
Li, Anqi
Spitzer, Alex
Shi, Guanya
Boots, Byron
Robotics
Terrain traversability in unstructured off-road autonomy has traditionally relied on semantic classification, resource-intensive dynamics models, or purely geometry-based methods to predict vehicle-terrain interactions. While inconsequential at low speeds, uneven terrain subjects our full-scale system to safety-critical challenges at operating speeds of 7--10 m/s. This study focuses particularly on uneven terrain such as hills, banks, and ditches. These common high-risk geometries are capable of disabling the vehicle and causing severe passenger injuries if poorly traversed. We introduce a physics-based framework for identifying traversability constraints on terrain dynamics. Using this framework, we derive two fundamental constraints, each with a focus on mitigating rollover and ditch-crossing failures while being fully parallelizable in the sample-based Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework. In addition, we present the design of our planning and control system, which implements our parallelized constraints in MPC and utilizes a low-level controller to meet the demands of our aggressive driving without prior information about the environment and its dynamics. Through real-world experimentation and traversal of hills and ditches, we demonstrate that our approach captures fundamental elements of safe and aggressive autonomy over uneven terrain. Our approach improves upon geometry-based methods by completing comprehensive off-road courses up to 22% faster while maintaining safe operation.
title Model Predictive Control for Aggressive Driving Over Uneven Terrain
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.12284