Clemson University, a public research institution in South Carolina, introduced its latest autonomous rescue vehicle, known as Deep Orange 15, at the Ground Vehicle Systems Engineering & Technology Symposium (GVSETS) in Novi, Michigan, on August 13. The vehicle is designed for high-speed, off-road search and rescue missions, featuring technologies such as a series hybrid powertrain, a high-voltage battery, semi-active suspension and a litter-loading mechanism.
Deep Orange 15 is the 15th vehicle produced through Clemson’s Deep Orange program, an initiative in the university’s department of automotive engineering. The program involves master’s students working with industry professionals to develop vehicle prototypes from concept to completion. The project is supported by several sponsors, including Clemson’s Virtual Prototyping of Autonomy-Enabled Ground Systems (VIPR-GS) program, the US Army’s DEVCOM Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC), Brembo, Fox Racing and North American Rescue.
The vehicle was designed to address challenges such as natural disaster relief and off-road rescue missions. For example, the university says it can autonomously navigate to a disaster scene, create a digital map of the area and transport an injured person back to safety while the driver remains on-site to assist others. In another scenario, the vehicle could rescue a stranded hiker in a rocky terrain and return autonomously to its original location.
Robert Prucka, the faculty lead on Deep Orange 15, highlighted the collaborative effort behind the vehicle’s development, “Our Deep Orange students collaborated across an 18-month period to develop this autonomous, high-speed, off-road relief vehicle from the ground up.
“Our digital transformation, virtual prototyping and digital engineering practices will enable us to design ground vehicles from a formations perspective and understand how specific technologies provide warfighting capabilities up front, long before we go into production decisions,” he added.
Following the completion of the Deep Orange 15 project, the vehicle will remain a research asset at Clemson University, contributing to the advancement of autonomous off-road vehicle research. It will serve as a tool for validating and verifying complex dynamic modeling and as a platform for testing control algorithms and energy management strategies.
This was originally published by Clemson University.