Development of Sensor Component for Terrain Evaluation and Obstacle Detection for an Unmanned Autonomous Vehicle

Abstract

Applications of autonomous vehicles are found in various diversified fields including defense, agriculture, mining, and space exploration. For successful operation of an autonomous vehicle, the vehicle has to dynamically interact with the environment around it. This dissertation presents the development and implementation of a sensor component to represent the surrounding environment around an autonomous vehicle. The environment is modeled as a grid and each cell in the grid is assigned a traversability value. Each of the two algorithms, obstacle detection and terrain evaluation, have certain advantages and limitations. Also like any other sensor algorithm, these two algorithms have some uncertainties associated with their outputs. In my work these algorithms are fused together to complement the uncertainties and limitations of each of them, and outputs of the two algorithms are fused using the certainty factors approach.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 2007
Accession Number
ADA506844

Entities

People

  • Sanjay C. Solanki

Organizations

  • University of Florida

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Sensors

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Autonomous Navigation
  • Autonomous Vehicles
  • C Programming Language
  • Computational Science
  • Computer Languages
  • Computer Programming
  • Coordinate Systems
  • Detection
  • Grids
  • Information Processing
  • Information Science
  • Laser Radar
  • Laser Sensors
  • Three Dimensional
  • Two Dimensional
  • Unmanned Systems
  • Unmanned Vehicles

Readers

  • Economics
  • Sensor Fusion and Tracking Systems.
  • Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Autonomous Capabilities and Mission Reconnaissance.

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy
  • Space
  • Space - Space Objects
  • Space - Spacecraft Maneuvers