MODEL-BASED SOIL PARAMETER IDENTIFICATION FOR WHEEL-TERRAIN INTERACTION DYNAMICS

This paper presents an algorithm for identifying soil parameters for wheel-terrain interaction dynamics. The soil parameters are useful for traversability prediction, traction control, and performance optimization of a wheeled vehicle traveling on unknown terrain. The Composite Simpson's Rule (CSR) is employed to approximate integrals of the full wheel-terrain interaction dynamic model. This is to facilitate the implementation of soil parameter identification on this model and allow fast identification speed. The 2-stage iterative Newton Raphson (NR) method is used for soil parameter identification. Simulation results show successful identification of a complete set of soil parameters with relatively fast speed. The approach in this paper has great potential to be applied for real off-road wheeled vehicle.