The Robotics Institute

My research interests are in the areas of mobile robots and sensor-based stability control of off-road heavy-trucks. I am interested in building robots and related systems that will help improving productivity without compromising safety in today's market place.

Off-Road heavy-truck dynamics
The goal of this work is to improve the performance of off-road heavy-trucks (e.g., lift trucks) without compromising operator safety. I am interested in the dynamic aspect of the stability of the vehicle. Off-road heavy-trucks have the characteristic that can articulate significant amount of mass. As a result, the dynamic properties of the vehicle change affecting its dynamic stability.

I am working on a system that computes the dynamic stability of an articulated vehicle (e.g., determines unsafe states of motion). The system senses the motion of the vehicle, which includes the motion due to articulation, and computes a stability measure. This measure represents how close the vehicle is to a tipover event and in what direction.