Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Practical Approach To Robotic Design For The Darpa Urban Challenge, Benjamin J. Patz, Yiannis Papelis, Remo Pillat, Gary Stein, Don Harper

VMASC Publications

This article presents a practical approach to engineering a robot to effectively navigate in an urban environment. Inherent in this approach is the use of relatively simple sensors, actuators, and processors to generate robot vision, intelligence, and planning. Sensor data are fused from multiple low-cost, two-dimensional laser scanners With an innovative rotational mount to provide three-dimensional coverage with image processing using both range and intensity data. Information is combined With Doppler radar returns to yield a world view processed by a context-based reasoning control system to yield tactical mission commands forwarded to traditional proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control loops. As an example …