DART-S: Reachability-Audited Active-Suspension Preconditioning for Off-Road Vehicle Jumps
2026-08-20 • Robotics
Robotics
AI summaryⓘ
The authors studied a system called DART-S that improves how a vehicle recovers from takeoff mistakes by adjusting the suspension before liftoff. This method changes the vehicle's pitch and wheel spin to better handle errors during airborne torque reactions. They tested DART-S in a simulated environment and found it greatly outperformed previous methods in maintaining stable landings. The system uses local calibration and selection techniques to predict and choose the best suspension actions. Their results show significant improvements in recovery success rates and drivetrain safety.
airborne torque reactiontakeoff error recoveryramp-face suspensionpitch controlwheel spinlocal calibration mapinterval-reachabilitybeamNG simulationdrivetrain limitsHolm adjustment
Authors
Yu Hu, Fangzhou Zhao, Liang Chen, Chen Min, Wei Li, Mingyuan Sang, Jiajia Ma, Shican Chen, Di Pang, Baolei Chen
Abstract
Airborne torque reaction cannot recover takeoff errors beyond the wheel angular-momentum budget. DART-S applies ramp-face suspension preconditioning to change pitch, pitch rate, and wheel spin before liftoff, thereby shifting the queried state and altering the remaining authority budget. To predict how each suspension action reshapes this state-budget pair, DART-S employs a local calibration map. A support-aware selector combines the predicted shift with local outcome evidence and an interval-reachability screen; an exact-pair audit reports residual authority. Across 600 new runs in 72 independent BeamNG sessions, every positive, negative, and boundary query follows its prespecified branch. At the confirmed 40°/13 m/s boundary, DART-S attains 24/24 post-touchdown attitude-criterion successes versus 0/24 for DART (session-level Holm-adjusted p=0.0234). At 11.5 m/s, a 0.35 s timing action attains 23/24 versus 0/24 for the static preset (p=0.0156). The 200 rad/s command guard keeps drivetrain hard-limit exceedance at zero across all 600 runs. The source code will be available at https://github.com/MeridianCAS/DART-S