Dealing with vehicle/terrain interactions when planning the motions of a rover

This paper deals with motion, planning for a mobile robot moving on a hilly three dimensional terrain and subjected to strong physical interaction. Constraints. The main contribution of this paper is a planning method which takes into account the dynamics of the robot, the robot/terrain interactions, the kinematic constraints of the robot, and classical constraints. The basic idea of the authors´ method is to integrate geometric and physical models of the robot and of the terrain in a two-stage trajectory planning process consisting of combining a “discrete search strategy” and a “continuous motion generation method”. It is shown how each planning step operates and how they interact in order to generate a “safe” and executable motion for the all-terrain vehicle