Fault-Tolerant Behavior-Based Motion Control for Offroad Navigation

Many tasks examined for robotic application like rescue missions or humanitarian demining require a robotic vehicle to navigate in unstructured natural terrain. This paper introduces a motion control for a four-wheeled offroad vehicle trying to tackle the problems arising. These include rough ground, steep slopes, wheel slippage, skidding and others that are difficult to grasp with a physical model and often impossible to acquire with sensory equipment. Therefore, a more reactive approach is chosen using a behavior-based architecture. This way a certain generalization in unknown environment is expected. The resulting behavior network is described and experiments performed in a simulation environment as well as in real world are presented. Additionally the performance of the utilized vehicle in case of mechanical or electronic defects is examined in simulation.