Cooperative simulation process of unmanned track vehicle in RecurDyn and Simulink

The article presents procedures for modeling the dynamics of the tracked mobile robot. The dynamic simulation of the mechanical part, including the vehicle hull, the wheel system, track assemblies and the virtual track, and the calculation of the interaction with the supporting surface, are performed in the RecurDyn software package using the High Mobility Tracked Vehicle Toolkit (HMTV). The mechanical part is described here as a system of solids, joints and force elements. The software package allows you to specify the type of interaction of tracks with the supporting surface: a caterpillar - a solid body (for example, movement on asphalt), a caterpillar - soft soil (loams, sandstones, etc.). The Becker’s theory is used to calculate the parameters of the interaction of tracks with the ground. Almost all the necessary quantities are available for analysis: coordinates, velocities, accelerations, reaction forces in the hinges, forces in the springs, contact interaction of the track, track tension, etc. The control system cannot be created by means of RecurDyn, therefore the model of such a system was built in Matlab / Simulink. The control system is an artificial neural network, which aim is to maintain a specified longitudinal motion velocity. Using co-simulation toolkit CoLink, the model of the mechanical part is exported from RecurDyn and included in Simulink for the subsequent simulation. The simulation results verified the effectiveness of the co-simulation model, and the method is of great benefit to study motion tracked mobile robot control algorithm in the next step.