Design of an active device for controlling lateral stability of fast mobile robot

Motivated by the trade-off between speed and stability for off-road navigation, a novel active anti-roll system has been developed in the context of a multidisciplinary project which aims at developing a high-speed and agile autonomous off-road rover. This paper presents the design, simulation and experimental validation of an active anti-roll system and its associated control. The proposed system possess the advantage of having a modular design that can be installed on any off-road chassis with independent suspensions. The proposed system controls directly the roll angle of the rover which is usually uncontrollable in conventional vehicles, hence improving off-road stability while maneuverings at high speed over uneven terrain. Furthermore, the control of the proposed active anti-roll system is based on a model predictive control (MPC) for the roll dynamics, which minimizes the load transfer during cornering and the energy consumed by the actuators. The control model is based on a dynamic model of the rover and on a stability criteria defined by the lateral load transfer (LLT). Moreover, this paper presents, simulation results from the high fidelity virtual platform modeled in MSC.Adams ®, as well as, results from recent field tests demonstrating the effectiveness of a hydraulic active anti-roll system mounted on, an especially developed experimental platform, SPIDO ROBOT while cornering at a high speed reaching 8 m/s.