Publication
Soil Contact Model for Environment Representation and Simulation of Legged Robot on Planetary Surface
Yong-Ho Yoo; Jakob Schwendner; Javier Hidalgo Carrió; Frank Kirchner
In: C. W. Fervers (Hrsg.). ISTVS 13th European Conference. European Regional Conference of the International Society for Terrain-Vehicle Systems (ISTVS-2015), 13th, October 21-23, Rome, Italy, ISTVS, 2015.
Abstract
This paper introduces a new soil contact model called plastic terramechanics particle (PTP). The purpose of the model is the simulation of legged robots on planetary surfaces. An analysis of walking and contact behaviors of a legged robot on the soil surface has been performed. From the analysis, fundamental contact behaviors have been selected and realized in the PTP soil contact model where complex foot-soil contact dynamics is modeled by using volume-cells and particles. This approach considerably reduces the modeling complexity and provides real-time processing capabilities. The work also shows an integration of the soil contact model into the environment representation used for navigation, operation and simulation tasks of legged robots. Typical environment representations for robotic applications uses 3D maps based on the multi-level laser scan data acquired by exteroceptive sensors mounted on the robot. The manuscript introduces the environment representation as a bridge between real and simulated world shared among robotic subsystems.