Autonomous Navigation of a Small-Scale Ground Vehicle Using Low-Cost IMU/GPS Integration for Outdoor Applications

摘要

This paper describes the development of an autonomous navigation system for a small-scale ground vehicle which uses four independent DC motors for propulsion and an Arduino Mega2560 as its onboard computing plataform. The vehicle sensory system is composed of a low-cost Inertial Measurement Unit (which includes 3 magnetometers) and a standard GPS receiver. The onboard computer sends data from the onboard sensors to a Ground Control Station (GCS) and receives navigation commands from it. These commands are then used to drive the ground vehicle's DC motors using PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation) signals. The Ground Control Station software implements an Extended Kalman Filter for sensor data fusion. An ethernet shield and an ethernet wifi bridge are used for wireless communication between the vehicle onboard computer and the Ground Control Station. A two-wheeled vehicle model was used to develop the vehicle controller and to tune the Kalman Filter parameters. Simulations and real-world test results of the proposed autonomous navigation procedure are presented and discussed for a path-following experiment.