Simulating physical interactions between an articulated mobile vehicle and a terrain

This paper deals with the prcblem of simulating the notions of a complex land vehicle moving in a natural environment. The contribution presented here is z motion generctor which predicts the dynamic behaviour of the vehicle when executing a given nominal motion plan. This ptan is expressed in terms of a channel to follow and of a set of intermediate subgoals to reach. Solving this motion generation problem requircs to explicitly reason about the geometric aod the physical aspects of the movements that the vehide has to execute. I-n our approach, this is done using two basic constructions derived from th€ concept oI phgsical nodet the 'generalized obstades" are used for physically guiding the movements of the vehicle using an explicit model of the vehicle/terrain interactions, and the "physical targets' are used to map the strategic information onto our physical representation of the world and to introduce the force feedback gestural control