Motion planning on rough terrain for an articulated vehicle in presence of uncertainties

This paper addresses motion planning for a mobile robot moving on a rough terrain. Simeon and Dacre-Wright proposed (1993) a geometrical planner for a particular architecture of robot, based on a discrete search technique operating in the (x, y, θ) configuration space of the robot, and on the evaluation of elementary feasible paths between two configurations. The overall efficiency of the approach was made possible by the use of fast algorithms for solving the placement problem and checking the validity of such placements. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we study the extension of this approach to an articulated vehicle composed of three axles connected to the chassis by joints allowing the roll and pitch movements. We also propose new algorithms to improve the robustness of the planner by considering additional constraints: uncertainties in the terrain model and existence of a free channel around the computed trajectory. Some simulation results presented at the end of the paper show the effectiveness of the planner which turns out to be both fast and capable of solving difficult problems