Way-point navigation for a skid-steer vehicle in unknown environments

Abstract

Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) allow people to remotely access and perform tasks in dangerous or inconvenient locations more effectively. They have been successfully used for practical applications such as mine detection, sample retrieval, and exploration and mapping. One of the fundamental requirements for the autonomous operation of any vehicle is the capability to traverse its environment safely. To accomplish this, UGVs rely on the data from their on-board sensors to solve the problems of localization, mapping, path planning, and controls. This paper proposes a combined mapping, path planning, and controls solution that will allow a skidsteer UGV to navigate safely through unknown environments and reach a goal location. The mapping algorithm generates 2D maps of the traversable environment, the path planner uses these maps to find kinodynamically feasible paths to the goal, and the tracking controller ensures that the vehicle stays on the generated path during traversal. All of the algorithms are computationally efficient enough to run onboard the robot in real-time, and the proposed solution has been experimentally verified on a custom built skid-steer vehicle allowing it to navigate to desired GPS waypoints through a variety of unknown environments.

Comprehensive study of skid-steer wheeled mobile robots: development and challenges

“…Hence, a robust SSWMR platform that can take into account these ever-changing situations is required. To cope with such situations, developments have been made regarding SSWMR system modeling, control design, guidance and navigation (Colyer and Economou, 1998; Rajagopalan et al , 2016; Kim et al , 2017; Chen et al , 2012). Further developments are required for achieving lower operating and designing costs, increased reliability, robust performance in unstructured environments.…”