Inflatable robotic rovers (IRRs) are a promising concept for long-range exploration and access to high-risk areas on planetary surfaces. Through inflation or expansion of their locomotion elements, inflatable rovers can achieve extraordinary terrainability not possible by other conventional mobility systems while maintaining respectable travel speeds. Early work by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laborat...

Tires equipped with sensors, the so-called "intelligent tires", can provide vital information for control systems, drivers and external users. In this research, tire dynamic strain characteristics in cornering conditions are collected and analysed in relation to the variation of tire working conditions, such as inflation pressure, rolling speed, vertical load and slip angle. An experimental tir...

In this study, a low degree-of-freedom mechanical model of a rolling tire is constructed, in which the lateral deformation of the contact patch and tire carcass is considered. The so-called delayed contact patch model is implemented and combined with a simple tire carcass model. The interaction between the contact patch and the carcass together with the lateral mode of the attached suspension s...

Direct tire-road contact friction estimation is essential for future autonomous cars and active safety systems. Friction estimation methods have been proposed earlier for driving conditions in the presence of a slip angle or slip ratio. However, the estimation of the friction from a freely-rolling tire is still an unsolved topic. Knowing the existing friction potential would be beneficial since...

Fuel consumption for heavy trucks depends on many factors like roads, weather, and driver behavior that are hard for a manufacturer to influence. However, one design possibility is the powertrain configuration. Here a new simulation program for heavy trucks is created to find the configuration of the powertrain that gives the lowest fuel consumption for each transport task. For efficient simula...

A tire’s three-dimensional stress for pavement is an important cause of asphalt disease. In order to study the contact distribution between tire and under real conditions, a sensor that can measure tri-axial synchronously designed, complete measurement system established. The variation trend value steady rolling were obtained, characteristics analyzed. results show in three directions near shou...