Charles Thorpe , Robotics Autonomous navigation of land vehicles is a standing challenge in the field of mobile robotics. Unlike aircraft, land vehicles are faced with environments that are physically complex and more dynamic.
Unexpected obstacles demand immediate action to prevent disaster.
This planning is dependent on producing data that is complete enough to make correct judgements concerning the world surrounding the robot. There are many remote sensing options available to the engineer, each varying in cost and effectiveness. Perhaps the most flexible is vision, which provides voluminous amounts of data, but requires a large amount of processing to produce useful information at an update frequency on par with the robot's system dynamics. It is the goal of this project to realize a primarily vision based guidance system for a high speed, autonomous robot over a known course. The robot, whose mechanical construction is nearing completion, is in the form of a traditional CMU Spring Carnival buggy, and will make use of the buggy course as a proving ground.