Nicolas Bouton

A rollover indicator based on the prediction of the load transfer in presence of sliding: application to an All Terrain Vehicle

The lateral rollover of quad bikes represents a significant part of severe accidents in the field of agricultural work. The specificities of such vehicles (small wheelbase, track and weight, as well as high speed), together with the terrain configuration (off-road environment) prevent from describing rollover occurrence as it is proposed for car-like vehicles. In particular, sliding effects significantly affects the evaluation of the rollover risk. This paper proposes a rollover risk indicator dedicated to off-road vehicles, taking into account the environment properties and more particularly the grip condition and its variation. It is based on the prediction of the lateral load transfer relying on vehicles models including sliding effects. This indicator can be run on-line when the vehicle is moving. It allows anticipating a potential danger, and could then be used to design security systems. Performances of this indicator are demonstrated using the multibody dynamic simulation software Adams.

A rollover indicator based on a tire stiffness backstepping observer: Application to an All-Terrain Vehicle

Lateral rollover is the leading cause of fatal accidents in light all-terrain vehicles (e.g. quad bikes), especially in the agricultural area. The estimation and prediction of hazardous situations are preliminary steps in the design of active security devices. If numerous metrics have already been defined for on-road vehicles, few approaches are suitable for fast motions in a natural environment (mainly due to tire/ground contact specificity and variability). This paper proposes an algorithm dedicated to the estimation and prediction of one metric, namely lateral load transfer (LLT), in order to anticipate rollover situations on an irregular and natural ground. It is based on a vehicle dynamic model, used jointly with a backstepping observer. It allows to take into account tire/ground contact nonlinearities and variability, which impact the rollover tendency. The efficiency of the metric is investigated through advanced simulations and full scale experiments on a Kymco quad bike.

Backstepping observer dedicated to tire cornering stiffness estimation: application to an all terrain vehicle and a farm tractor

Most of active devices focused on vehicle stability concerns on-road cars and cannot be applied satisfactorily in an off-road context, since the variability and the non-linearities of the tire/ground contact are often neglected. In previous work, a rollover indicator devoted to light ATVs, accounting for these phenomena has been proposed. It is based on the prediction of the lateral load transfer. Such an indicator requires the online knowledge of the tire cornering stiffness, initially selected from a ground classes network. In this paper, an adapted backstepping observer, making only use of yaw rate measurement, is designed to improve specifically tire cornering stiffness estimation. Capabilities of such an observer are demonstrated and discussed through both advanced simulations and actual experiments.

Dynamic control of the Quattro robot by the leg edges

This paper discusses variable selection for the efficient dynamic control of the Quattro parallel robot through an inverse dynamic model expressed by means of leg orientations. A selection is made within a group of variables where each can imply the state of the robot. Besides, in this work, steering a parallel robot dynamically using its self-projection onto the image plane (where the edges of the lower-legs are exploited in control) is proposed and validated for the first time. In the light of the realistic control simulation, the formative points of better control of the Quattro robot are figured out.

An active anti-rollover device based on Predictive Functional Control: application to an All-Terrain Vehicle

The active devices dedicated to on-road vehicle stability cannot be applied satisfactorily in an off-road context, since the variability and the non-linear features of grip conditions can no longer be neglected. Specific solutions have then to be investigated. In this paper, the prevention of light All-Terrain Vehicle (ATV) rollover is addressed. First, a backstepping observer is designed in order to estimate online a rollover indicator accounting for sliding phenomena, from a low-cost perception system. Next, the maximum vehicle velocity, compatible with a safe motion over some horizon of prediction, is computed via Predictive Functional Control (PFC), and can then be applied, if needed, to the vehicle actuator to prevent from rollover. The capabilities of the proposed device are demonstrated and discussed thanks to an advanced simulation testbed that has proved to supply results very close to experimental ones.

A method for simplifying the analysis of leg-based visual servoing of parallel robots

As the end-effector pose is an external property of a parallel robot, it is natural to use exteroceptive sensors to measure it in order to suppress inaccuracies coming from modelling errors. Cameras offer this possibility. So, it is possible to obtain higher accuracy than in the case of classic control schemes (based on geometrical model). In some cases, it is impossible to directly observe the end-effector, but the leg directions can instead be used. In this case, however, unusual results were recorded, namely: (i) the possibility of controlling the robot by observing a number of legs less than the total number of legs, and that (ii) in some cases, the robot does not converge to the desired end-effector pose, even if the observed leg directions did. These results can be explained through the use of the hidden robot concept, which is a tangible visualisation of the mapping between the observed leg direction space (internal property) and Cartesian space (external property). This hidden robot has different assembly modes and singular configurations from the real robot, and it is a powerful tool to simplify the analysis of the aforementioned mapping. In this paper, the concept of hidden robot model is generalised for any type of parallel robot controlled through visual servoing based on observation of the leg directions. Validation has been accomplished through experiments on a Quattro robot with 4 dof.

A new device dedicated to autonomous mobile robot dynamic stability: Application to an off-road mobile robot

Automation in outdoor applications (farming, surveillance, etc.) requires highly accurate control of mobile robots, at high speed, accounting for natural ground specificities (mainly sliding effects). In previous work, predictive control algorithms dedicated to All-Terrain Vehicle lateral stability was investigated. Satisfactory advanced simulation results have been reported but no experimental ones were presented. In this paper, the prevention of a real off-road mobile robot rollover is addressed. First, both rollover dynamic modeling and previous work on a Mixed observer designed to estimate on-line sliding phenomena for path tracking control are recalled. Then, this observer is here used to compute a rollover indicator accounting for sliding phenomena, from a low-cost perception system. Next, the maximum vehicle velocity, compatible with a safe motion over some horizon of prediction, is computed via Predictive Functional Control (PFC), and can then be applied, if needed, to the vehicle actuator to prevent from rollover. The capabilities of the proposed device are demonstrated and discussed thanks to real experimentation.

Off-road mobile robots control: An accurate and stable adaptive approach

Automation in outdoor applications at high speed (such as farming, surveillance, etc.) requires the highly accurate control of mobile robots, taking into account natural ground characteristics, in order to preserve both motion accuracy and robot stability. To meet such expectations, advanced control laws must be developed. In previous studies, adaptive and predictive control algorithms, based on both an extended kinematic and a dynamic representation, have been proposed to specifically address path tracking for such robots. However, even if high accuracy path tracking can be attained, such control laws do not enable roll-over situations to be avoided. This paper therefore addresses the prevention of off-road mobile robot roll-over as well as path tracking. In order to meet this aim, a stability metric, depending on a dynamic model, is computed and sliding phenomena are accounted for via a mixed observer (a multi-model observer, mixing kinematic and dynamic modelling). The steering angle is then controlled by the path tracking algorithm, and robot longitudinal speed may be limited to ensure safe motion. More precisely, the robot velocity leading to a critical value of the stability metric is computed via Predictive Functional Control (PFC), and this constitutes the speed control set point when inferior to the desired robot speed. The capabilities of the proposed approach are demonstrated and discussed thanks to full scale experimentation.

A Tire Stiffness Backstepping Observer Dedicated to All-Terrain Vehicle Rollover Prevention

Most active devices focused on vehicle stability concern on-road cars and cannot be applied satisfactorily in an off-road context, since the variability and the non-linearities of tire/ground contact are often neglected. In previous work, a rollover indicator devoted to light all-terrain vehicles accounting for these phenomena has been proposed. It is based on the prediction of the lateral load transfer. However, such an indicator requires the on-line knowledge of the tire cornering stiffness. Therefore, in this paper, an adapted backstepping observer, making use only of yaw rate measurement, is designed to estimate tire cornering stiffness and to account for its non-linearity. The capabilities of such an observer are demonstrated and discussed through both advanced simulations and actual experiments.

Enhancing control robustness of a 6 DOF parallel testing machine

For the first time, a Nooru-Mohammed test was realized using a new kind of loading machine based on gough platform. However, it has been shown that boundary conditions on the concrete specimen are not respected. As a consequence, a new control strategy needs to be developed. This paper aims at applying a well-known control loop based on hybrid force/position law to a loading application. This new control algorithm has been developed according to the task and the structure specificities. Indeed, it permits to realize multi-axial test where the boundary conditions are controlled and respected by using the extra degrees of freedom.