Instrumenting An All Terrain Vehicle For Off Road Mobility Analysis PDF Download

Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technology developed for off-road vehicle dynamics at the University of Pretoria,South Africa, was recently assessed for all-season and all-terrain viability through a Foreign Technology Assessment Support (FTAS) program at the US Army, Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, New Hampshire. Advancements in camera technology and computational power has allowed algorithms to determine featureand depth tracking of surfaces in sequential images at near real time. These advancements have enabled the application of DIC to measure surface and velocity profiles as well as deformation from a reference state for terrain or for tires. In large off-road vehicle dynamics DIC can be used to assess and validate the terramechanics models by monitoring the road or terrain surface before and after the tire along with the motion of the vehicle or tire; and, when used as real-time feedback with driver assists or control software, to improve maneuverability of vehicles. From these measurements the terrain roughness and deformation can provide terrain trafficability, and the relative terrain and tire motion used for vehicle safety systems.The project objectives were to evaluate the application of DIC on military vehicles to measure deformation and vehicle motion on variable terrain surfaces with the ultimate goal of providing additional information to the driver, vehicle control system, or real-time data assimilation for mobility and maneuver optimization. The technology was tested and validated using the CRREL Instrumented Vehicle, an instrumented HMMWV (M1097) , and the much larger Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT). Validation testing was conducted using a variety of maneuvers on snow,ice, water, asphalt, concrete and vegetated ground surfaces.