Design of Special Purpose off Road Vehicle (SPORV) for Unmanned Ground Vehicle Application

Abstract

This paper describes the design of a Special Purpose Off Road Vehicle which was developed as the main body for an Unmanned Ground Vehicle. The stringent requirement for off-road capabilities and the need to incorporate a plethora of vision based sensing mechanism was the main design criteria that were fulfilled by the Special Purpose Off Road Vehicle. The Special Purpose Off Road Vehicle is incorporated with a host of actuators, instrumentation and drive circuits, Data Acquisition System and remote communication and control module. The Special Purpose Off Road Vehicle is also equipped with an onboard 2 GHZ Pentium Core 2 Duo Processor Class PC that serves as the main controller when it is operated in the UGV mode. The final prototype unit of the Special Purpose Off Road Vehicle was successfully designed, developed and fabricated according to the set requirement and is used as a research prototype unit at Science and Technology Research Institute for Defence, Ministry Of Defence, Malaysia.