Control of both manned and unmanned (i.e. autonomous or teleoperated) military vehicles is difficult for many reasons. As a result, vehicle accidents (most notably rollover) are one of the leading causes of casualty in Army operations (in manned vehicles) and disabling (in UGVs). Therefore, there exists a significant need to introduce vehicle stability enhancement technology to military vehicles. Quantum Signal has initiated development of a low cost vehicle stability enhancement system, dubbed VSS+, that is applicable to a wide range of legacy vehicles of varying size and type. VSS+ will provide information to the operator (or onboard control systems) on vehicle stability in real time, and will have both reactive and predictive capabilities. It will be intended as an add-on functionality for retrofitting existing vehicles, and use standardized interface architectures and protocols. The primary objective of previous Phase I work by Quantum Signal was to investigate the feasibility of the VSS+ system and to demonstrate proof of concept results through extensive simulation. In Phase II, the primary objective is to develop a fully-functional prototype of the VSS+ system, and demonstrate its performance on a manned or unmanned vehicle operating in Army-relevant conditions.
Keywords: Unmanned Ground Vehicle, Terrain Characterization, Vehicle Control, Autonomous, State Detection
