Stability Control Improvement and State Detection for Autonomous Vehicles

Loss of vehicle control and vehicle rollover is a major cause of accidents for military vehicles such as the MRAP, LMTV, and FMTV. This problem is compounded in places with primitive, often unstable, roadways and rugged terrain. Standard roll stability control systems, such as those used in the automotive industry, can be used to reduce the likelihood of rollover caused by overly aggressive maneuvers on flat terrain, but they are generally not capable of preventing tripped or terrain influenced rolls. By leveraging advances in perception sensors, computing power, and data fusion, our proposal seeks to develop a tightly integrated system that perceives the future terrain/environment, calculates the vehicle dynamic response, and either selects a path/vehicle state that does not create rollover conditions and/or warns an operator of the potential instability in time for a corrective response. Such as system would significantly reduce military vehicle accidents and save lives.