Determining forces required to override obstacles for ground vehicles

Abstract

The military is constantly expanding the use of unmanned ground vehicles in warfighting applications that often involve complex environments. Part of the focus of military research is to improve or validate existing routing algorithms which are used to predict vehicle mobility. Routing algorithms are based on the time required for vehicle movement through a series of obstacles such as trees or fences, thus requiring an assessment of the ability to override such obstacles as compared to finding an alternate maneuver path. The required overriding force can be computed and compared to a vehicle's tractive force to determine the best viable option. If overriding the obstacle is an option (tractive force exceeds the required overriding force), the delay in overriding can be assessed as compared to the delay in maneuvering around the obstacle. This study provides a quick and reasonable calculation of the force required to override specific types of vertically embedded obstacles to support the determination of movement capabilities for unmanned ground vehicles on the battlefield. Published by Elsevier Ltd. on behalf of ISTVS.

Physical-geographic factors of terrain trafficability of military vehicles according to Western World methodologies

“…While modelling vehicle terrain trafficability, the possibility of manoeuvring between the trees is the first determination that must be made. Then, if an excessive density is detected, the possibility of driving over the trees is considered (Haley et al, 1979a;Pearson and Wright, 1980;Messmore et al, 1981;Terrain Analysis, 1990;Ahlvin and Haley, 1992;Mason et al, 2012). Hubacek et al (2015) also investigated the influence of root systems of different tree species to determine the possibility of tree override.…”

Use of a Multilayer Perceptron to Automate Terrain Assessment for the Needs of the Armed Forces

“…From the point of view of passability, studies exploring the ability to overcome land obstacles by knocking them down are also important. One example of this [13] shows an interesting attempt to design an algorithm to allow an unmanned vehicle to move through various terrain obstacles. Assumptions similar to those discussed in this article were presented [14], where the author described algorithms that determined passability for a square primary field.…”

The induced shock and impact force as affected by the obstacle geometric factors during tire-obstacle collision dynamics

“…An off-road vehicle stability traversing over obstacle has been a matter of concern reflected by the numerous studies [9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Research about tractor stability and dynamics could be experimental, computer simulation or computer simulation and experimentation.…”