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Off-road vehicles always experience serious uncertain longitudinal and lateral slips when running on soft and slope terrains, and some parameters of the vehicles, such as the cornering stiffness and the slip of wheels, are always not constants. In this paper, control strategies for the torque of each wheel and the rear-wheel-steering angle are proposed to maintain a stable velocity and approach an ideal reference model for the off-road vehicle by using second-order sliding mode (SOSM) techniques. An observer is constructed to estimate the actual sideslip angle of the vehicle with the consideration of uncertainties and disturbances of the system. Then, with conditions of bounded uncertainties and disturbances, composite super-twisting (ST) controllers combined with a velocity controller are designed to generate the total torque, the differential torque, and the rear-wheel-steering angle. On this basis, the proposed controllers have been verified to lead good robustness for maintaining the stable velocity and approaching the ideal reference model by using an optimal torque allocation controller at a lower layer. In comparison with conventional yaw moment controllers without the rear-wheel-steering control, the proposed controllers are shown to be more effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To investigate and improve the mobility of the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), it is necessary to consider the mechanical properties of the interaction between the wheels and the ground. In this paper, a new solution method, the forced-slip solution method, which uses a semi-empirical approach, was presented. That is, given the wheel’s vertical load and drawbar pull or driving torque as known input values, the unknown slip ratio can be resolved. The alternative method involves predicting the mechanics for a given slip ratio. The proposed method correlates better with actual wheel movements, and by studying a single wheel, this solution method can also be used to resolve the mechanical properties of the front and rear wheels in a four-wheel-drive (4WD) LRV configuration. It can also be used to consider the multi-pass effect of the rear wheels on lunar soil. The calculation results show that the 4WD LRV driving efficiency varies with the position of the center of mass. Thus, the LRV driving efficiency can be optimized by adjusting the position of its center of mass. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]