UGV History 101: A Brief History of Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) Development Efforts
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief survey of a number of different threads of development that have brought the Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) field to its current state, together with references to allow the interested reader to probe more deeply. In the broadest "dictionary" sense, a UGV is any piece of mechanized equipment that moves across the surface of the ground and serves as a means of carrying or transporting something, but explicitly does NOT carry a human being. A discussion of such a broad universe of possible UGV systems needs some organizing principle, and in fact a taxonomy of UGV systems could be based upon any of a number of characteristics of each system. To reasonably limit its scope, this survey will focus principally on the large number of systems in which the "long pole" technological challenge is or has been in the area of navigation and control. Within that context, a teleoperated vehicle system is one in which navigational guidance is transmitted to the vehicle from an externally situated human operator; an autonomous vehicle is one that determines its own course using onboard sensor and processing resources; the term "supervisory control" is often given to the myriad of control schemes that combine inputs from both an external human operator and onboard sensors to determine the UGV's path. (53 refs.)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 1995
- Accession Number
- ADA422845
Entities
People
- Douglas W. Gage
Organizations
- Naval Command, Control and Ocean Surveillance Center