This paper provides an overview of the latest advances in road vehicle suspension design, dynamics, and control, together with the authors' perspectives, in the context of vehicle ride, handling, and stability. The general aspects of road vehicle suspension dynamics and design are discussed, followed by descriptions of road-roughness excitations with a particular emphasis on road potholes. Passive suspension system designs and their effects on road vehicle dynamics and stability are presented in terms of in-plane and full-vehicle arrangements. Controlled suspensions are also reviewed and discussed. The paper concludes with some potential research topics, in particular those associated with the development of hybrid and electric vehicles.

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Editors’ perspectives: road vehicle suspension design, dynamics, and control

Humanoid robots, unmanned rovers, entertainment pets, drones, and so on are great examples of mobile robots. They can be distinguished from other robots by their ability to move autonomously, with ...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1729881419839596

A review of mobile robots: Concepts, methods, theoretical framework, and applications

Although a wide variety of tool failure sensing techniques have been developed over the years, few of them have been used in industries successfully. This paper provides a review of the numerous techniques and methods of monitoring tool wear particularly in turning operations. By and large, these techniques appear to be “single-minded” in that they are capable of detecting and diagnosing tool wear and failure relating to particular classes of faults. A universal approach which can detect the very many failure modes in tool condition monitoring has still not been devised.

Tool wear and failure monitoring techniques for turning—A review

Suspension components play key roles in the running behaviour of rail vehicles, and therefore, mathematical models of suspension components are essential ingredients of railway vehicle multi-body models. The aims of this paper are to review existing models for railway vehicle suspension components and their use for railway vehicle dynamics multi-body simulations, to describe how model parameters can be defined and to discuss the required level of detail of component models in view of the accuracy expected from the overall simulation model. This paper also addresses track models in use for railway vehicle dynamics simulations, recognising their relevance as an indispensable component of the system simulation model. Finally, this paper reviews methods presently in use for the checking and validation of the simulation model.

Modelling of suspension components in a rail vehicle dynamics context

In this article we present two nonlinear force controllers based on the sliding mode control theory. For this purpose we use the detailed mathematical model of the pneumatic system developed in the first part of the paper. The first controller is based on the complete model, and exhibits superior performance both in the numerical simulation and experiments, but requires complex online computations for the control law. The second controller neglects the valve dynamics and the time delay due to connecting tubes. The performance of this controller exhibits slight degradation for configurations with relatively short tubes, and at frequencies up to 20 Hz. At higher frequencies or when long connecting tubes are used, however, the performance exhibits significant degradation compared to the one provided by the full order controller.@S0022-0434~00!00703-6#

A High Performance Pneumatic Force Actuator System: Part II—Nonlinear Controller Design

. The world market of mobile robotics is expected to increase substantially in the next 20 yr, surpassing the market of industrial robotics in terms of units and sales. Important fields of application are homeland security, surveillance, demining, reconnaissance in dangerous situations, and agriculture. The design of the locomotion systems of mobile robots for unstructured environments is generally complex, particularly when they are required to move on uneven or soft terrains, or to climb obstacles. This paper sets out to analyse the state-of-the-art of locomotion mechanisms for ground mobile robots, focussing on solutions for unstructured environments, in order to help designers to select the optimal solution for specific operating requirements. The three main categories of locomotion systems (wheeled – W, tracked – T and legged – L) and the four hybrid categories that can be derived by combining these main locomotion systems are discussed with reference to maximum speed, obstacle-crossing capability, step/stair climbing capability, slope climbing capability, walking capability on soft terrains, walking capability on uneven terrains, energy efficiency, mechanical complexity, control complexity and technology readiness. The current and future trends of mobile robotics are also outlined.

/pdf/review-article-locomotion-systems-for-ground-mobile-robots-ri69ey6fwi.pdf

Review article: locomotion systems for ground mobile robots in unstructured environments

This article presents the dimensionless model and the design considerations of a pneumatic suspension with auxiliary reservoir. The dimensionless model provided makes it possible to fully understan...

Air Suspension Dimensionless Analysis and Design Procedure

Wheelchair.q, a motorized wheelchair with stair climbing ability

Design of a self-leveling cam mechanism for a stair climbing wheelchair

This paper present Wheelchair.q, a concept for a stair climbing wheelchair able to move in structured and unstructured environment, to climb over obstacles and to go up and down stairs. The wheelchair passively changes its locomotion, from a rolling on wheels to a stepping on legs one. The different locomotions are triggered only by local and dynamic conditions and not by an external command and so only one motor for each locomotion unit is necessary. A four-bar linkage moves and rotates the chair, in order to avoid wheelchair turning over and to guarantee a comfortable posture to the passenger.

Giuseppe Quaglia

Papers

Review article: locomotion systems for ground mobile robots in unstructured environments

Air Suspension Dimensionless Analysis and Design Procedure

Wheelchair.q, a motorized wheelchair with stair climbing ability

Design of a self-leveling cam mechanism for a stair climbing wheelchair

Wheelchair.q, a mechanical concept for a stair climbing wheelchair