This paper describes the development and performance of a sensor system that was utilized for autonomous navigation of an unmanned ground vehicle. Four different sensor types were integrated to identify obstacles in the vicinity of the vehicle and to identify smooth terrain that could be traversed at speeds up to thirty miles per hour. The paper also describes a sensor fusion approach that was developed whereby the output of all sensors was in a common grid based format. The environment around the vehicle was modeled by a 120×120 grid where each grid cell was 0.5m× 0.5m in size and where the orientation of the grid lines was always maintained parallel to the north-south and east-west lines. Every sensor output an estimate of the traversability of each grid cell. For the three dimensional obstacle avoidance sensors (rotating ladar and stereo vision) the three dimensional point data was projected onto the grid plane. The terrain traversability sensors, i.e. fixed ladar and monocular vision, estimated traversability based on smoothness of the spatial plane fitted to the range data or the commonality in appearance of pixels in the grid cell to those directly in front of the vehicle, respectively.
The Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems (JAUS) Operator Control Units and Payloads Committee (OPC) will be conducting a series of experiments to expedite the production of cost-effective interoperable unmanned systems, user control interfaces, payloads, et cetera. The objective of the initial experiment will be to demonstrate teleoperation of heterogeneous unmanned systems. The experiment will test Level 1 compliance between multiple JAUS subsystems and will include unmanned air, ground, and surface vehicles developed by vendors in the government and commercial sectors. Insight gained from participants initial planning, development, and integration phases will help identify areas of the JAUS standard which can be improved to better facilitate interoperability between Operator Control Units (OCU) and unmanned systems. The process of preparing Mobius, an OCU developed by Autonomous Solutions, Inc., for JAUS Level 1 compliance is discussed.
One of the largest factors relating to the commercial success of unmanned vehicles will be ease of use. A man machine interface (MMI) with the goal of allowing a user to easily task, monitor, and control multiple vehicles can benefit from several advancements in human machine interaction from both the research and commercial sectors. This paper focuses on the design considerations of an MMI that balances the complexity inherent to the control of multiple autonomous vehicles with the simplicity required for commercialization. It also profiles MARS, an MMI that Autonomous Solutions Incorporated has developed to facilitate the commercialization of automated test vehicles, and discusses an example applicable to the Goodyear Proving Grounds facility.
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