A System for Fast Navigation of Autonomous Vehicles

Abstract

This report describes an autonomous mobile robot designed to navigate at high speeds over featureless terrain-- terrain which is not navigable by relying on features that are found on paved roads and highways. To this end we have developed a paradigm that we call position based navigation that relies on explicit vehicle position information from inertial and satellite instruments, to navigate. Specifically we have tackled four main areas--path tracking, which guides the robot vehicle over a pre-specified path; obstacle detection, which is responsible for bringing the vehicle to a stop from high speed when an obstacle is detected; obstacle avoidance, which is responsible for steering the vehicle around detected obstacles so as to rejoin the specific path; and computing architecture, which integrates all the capabilities into one system. We discuss the algorithms and the devices that were implemented on NavLab, a navigation testbed at Carnegie Mellon. The most notable of our results is the 11m/s speed achieved by the vehicle.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1991
Accession Number
ADA243523

Entities

People

  • Dai Feng
  • Gary Shaffer
  • Paul Keller
  • Sanjiv Singh
  • Wen F. Shi

Organizations

  • Carnegie Mellon University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Biomedical
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Sensors
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Algorithms
  • Cartesian Coordinates
  • Collision Avoidance
  • Computer Programming
  • Computers
  • Control Systems
  • Coordinate Systems
  • Detection
  • Guidance
  • Inertial Navigation
  • Inertial Navigation Systems
  • Navigation
  • Navigators
  • Operating Systems
  • Software Development
  • Three Dimensional
  • Two Dimensional

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Educational Psychology
  • Robotics and Automation.

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - Autonomous Systems
  • Autonomy
  • Space
  • Space - Spacecraft Maneuvers