Heading Stabilization and Anti-Rollover for Chaos

摘要

Chaos is a 2-man-portable tele-operated vehicle designed for crossing rugged terrain. Chaos is capable of crossing large piles of cinder blocks, picnic tables, and steep hills of loose soil. These feats are accomplished through use of 4 independent track arms, each of which can be articulated at an arbitrary angle and driven at an arbitrary speed. These make the vehicle extremely capable but also demand significant skill on the part of the user. It is therefore desirable to automate the arm angles and track speeds to ease operator burden. This paper reports on preliminary efforts to implement 2 intelligent behaviors along these lines. The first involves heading stabilization: A gyroscope is used to sense yaw and yaw rate, and these are compared with the operators commands. Deviations are then used to automatically correct the heading. This is useful when Chaos is climbing stairs or other bumpy terrain, which can cause the vehicle to veer off in unwanted directions. We call the other behavior anti-rollover. In this case, the output of a gyroscope is monitored to detect if roll or pitch thresholds are exceeded. When they are, the track arms are automatically positioned to stabilize the vehicle and keep it right side up. Experimental results for both algorithms are included.