Fast Simulation of Vehicles with Non-deformable Tracks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new, efficient simulation technique for tracked vehicles using Contact Surface Motion, implemented as a Gazebo plugin, enabling faster and plausible vehicle dynamics simulation.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel Contact Surface Motion method for fast, realistic simulation of tracked vehicles, integrated into an open-source robotics simulator.

Findings

Compared with existing methods, the proposed technique offers improved computational speed.

The method achieves plausible vehicle dynamics suitable for robotics simulation.

Implementation as a Gazebo plugin facilitates easy adoption and testing.

Abstract

This paper presents a novel technique that allows for both computationally fast and sufficiently plausible simulation of vehicles with non-deformable tracks. The method is based on an effect we have called Contact Surface Motion. A comparison with several other methods for simulation of tracked vehicle dynamics is presented with the aim to evaluate methods that are available off-the-shelf or with minimum effort in general-purpose robotics simulators. The proposed method is implemented as a plugin for the open-source physics-based simulator Gazebo using the Open Dynamics Engine.