Improvement of the operability of a tracked vehicle on uneven terrain using autonomous control of active flippers

Active flippers for tracked vehicles are very useful to improve traversability on uneven terrain. However it is widely known that control of flippers also increases the work-load for operators, particularly where the vehicle and the operator are far apart. To reduce the work-load, we aim to realize a sensor-based autonomous controller of flippers to enable a ‘semi-autonomous operation’ of tracked vehicles. In this research, two laser range sensors are used for terrain sensing, and gyro sensors are used for the measurement of the robot’s attitude. Based on such sensor system, we propose a strategy of simple sensor-based motion of active flippers for tracked vehicles to enable a semi-autonomous operation. In this paper, we introduce a strategy of motion of active flippers. Finally, we report several experimental results to verify the validity of our approach.