Dealing with vehicle/terrain interactions when planning the motions of a rover

This paper deals with motion planning for a mobile robot moving on a hilly three dimensional terrain and subjected to strong physical interaction constraints. The main contribution of this paper is a planning method which takes into account the dynamics of the robot, the robot/terrain interactions, the kinematic constraints of the robot, and classical constraints. The basic idea of our method is to integrate geometric and physical models of the robot and of the terrain in a two-stage trajectory planning process consisting in combining a \discrete search strategy" and a \continuous motion generation method". It will be shown how each planning step operates and how they interact in order to generate a \safe" and \executable motion for the all-terrain vehicle. Abstract This paper deals with motion planning for a mobile robot moving on a hilly three dimensional terrain and subjected to strong physical interaction constraints. The main contribution of this paper is a planning method which takes into account the dynamics of the robot, the robot/terrain interactions, the kinematic constraints of the robot, and classical constraints. The basic idea of our method is to integrate geometric and physical models of the robot and of the terrain in a two-stage trajectory planning process consisting in combining a \discrete search strategy" and a \continuous motion generation method". It will be shown how each planning step operates and how they interact in order to generate a \safe" and \executable motion for the all-terrain vehicle.