Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!hayes.ims.alaska.edu!milton!uw-beaver!cornell!jennings From: jennings@svax.cs.cornell.edu (Jim Jennings) Newsgroups: comp.robotics Subject: Re: Mathematical Models of Automobile Dynamics Message-ID: <50852@cornell.UUCP> Date: 17 Jan 91 18:53:11 GMT References: Sender: nobody@cornell.UUCP Reply-To: jennings@svax.cs.cornell.edu (Jim Jennings) Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept, Ithaca NY Lines: 37 In article yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes: > >As part of my thesis research in behavior-based robotics, I'm going to >be building a simulated robot control system for freeway driving, and >I'd like to include reasonable assumptions about automobile dynamics >in the simulator. [info wish list deleted] If you really only want to make some guesses about maximum accelerations, velocities, and such, buy a few issues of Road and Track magazine. When they review a car, they give you these sorts of specs, including torque and hp curves, from which you can derive some of what you need. Most useful to you might be velocity curves of the 0-x mph runs. *However*, I think you're totally at sea if you expect to learn anything from this kind of simulation. How will you model changing grip due to tread deformation, road surface, tire pressure, sidewall windup, suspension geometry, tire temperature, tire compound, road material, slip rate and angle, etc.? And this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to analyzing automobile handling. You could argue that some of these effects on the trajectory of your modeled vehicle are negligible, but if you want to know about the extremes of adhesion in turns, acceleration, and braking, then I won't believe your arguments. If you want to use a behavior-based system (or any other, really) to control a vehicle with nontrivial dynamics, my suggestion is to build a (real) vehicle that can travel at sufficient (scale) speed. --Jim Jennings --Cornell Computer Science Robotics Lab