A Decision Based Mobility Model for Semi and Fully Autonomous Vehicles 2020-01-0747

With the emergence of intelligent ground vehicles, an objective evaluation of vehicle mobility has become an even more challenging task. Vehicle mobility refers to the ability of a ground vehicle to traverse from one point to another, preferably in an optimal way. Numerous techniques exist for evaluating the mobility of vehicles on paved roads, both quantitatively and qualitatively, however, capabilities to evaluate their off-road performance remains limited. Whereas a vehicle’s off-road mobility may be significantly enhanced with intelligence, it also introduces many new variables into the decision making process that must be considered. In this paper, we present a decision analytic framework to accomplish this task. In our approach, a vehicle’s mobility is modeled using an operator’s preferences over multiple mobility attributes of concern. We also provide a method to analyze various operating scenarios including the ability to mitigate uncertainty in the vehicles inputs. An example of this is the collection of soil properties data using techniques such as remote sensing. Operators of these vehicles are interested in finding the value of collecting such information. We present our approach on a vehicle selection decision between ground vehicles exhibiting different levels of autonomy.