Abstracts Transportation

Holistic design for a simplistic autonomous vehicle

by Jacob Coles

Autonomous vehicle control systems are becoming more and more reliable, efficient and safe than human drivers as time elapses. Thi is a consequence of improved, low power, and high speed embedded processors, advanced high-level development platforms, open source maps and software, high quality, low cost sensors and satellite navigation. This thesis features an investigation of some simplistic control methods used for a miniature vehicle needing to navigate a physical grid with walols in a known, mapped area. The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate and explain some of the elementary concepts of autonomous control on the most basic level of logic and control. While the vehicle presented is simple, its design would suit many applications, such as factory floor transportation, or a mail delivery system in a building. Consequently, this thesis will be focused on a simplistic, low cost implementations of such a type of system. It will not, however, focus in detail on modern technologies and advanced control systems, such as for example, autonomous road driving. The vehicle developed for this project was designed as an entry in the 2017 NI ARC (National Instruments Autonomous Robotics Competition).