Tip-over Prevention: Adaptive Control Development

Skid-steered, tracked, teleoperated robots are used to perform high-risk critical missions such as bomb disposal under conditions deemed too risky to send a human. Tracked robots work well on structured surfaces such as asphalt roads, but not as well in unstructured environments, including collapsed buildings or on rough terrain covered with sand, brush, rocks and debris. Often the robots carry heavy payloads that raise their centers of mass, increasing their risk of tipping over. Since it is often not feasible to send a human to right a toppled robot, tip-over is equivalent to mission failure. Hence, an autonomous behavior to prevent robot tip-over is desired. In this research, a tipover prevention behavior is developed.