Autopilot system design and practice of an unmanned ground vehicle

摘要

The study designs an autopilot of an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) to perform navigation and control. The graphical programming language LabVIEW is used to make the task of control systems engineering clear and easy to handle. The speed and direction of the three-wheel UGV are controlled by two DC motors. The essential lateral direction control with the inner loop for steering angle control and the outer loop for heading angle control is designed by successive-loop-closure approach. The controller gains are tuned by on-line closed-loop system test. The lateral guidance strategy for achieving straight-line path following is to construct a vector field of desired heading relative to the desired path that results in the UGV moving toward the path. The experimental results from HIL simulations and field test show that the proposed autopilot is effective for navigation and control of an UGV.