Development and Real-time Dynamic Positioning of an Unmanned Ground Vehicle

Abstract

Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) are the vehicles without any human present in the vehicle but the UGV may be controlled by human from a remote location or UGV may be operated autonomously depending on the advancement of the vehicle. For the operation of the UGV position of the vehicle is accurately determined and further the estimated current position is used for navigation of the vehicle. Navigation system for Unmanned Ground Vehicles must be effective and efficient in order to have a safer and tuned operation. In general GPS is used for the locating UGVs, but GPS signals are weak and not reliable everywhere, like underground mine areas and inner part of dense concrete buildings. The objective of this project is to develop an Unmanned Ground Vehicle and to design a relative positioning method for navigation of unmanned ground vehicles (UGV) on a plane surface. A relative positioning method is developed to increase the reliability of the positioning of UGV. For this, a comparative study is performed to get effective sensor readings for the relative distance calculation and also deviation or orientation of the UGV is computed using angle measurement which is absolute without any fail. After getting data from the sensors the position of the UGV is estimated and path of the UGV is traced. Developed UGV is used to test the performance of the relative positioning using the sensors. The UGV can be controlled manually as well as can be operated automatically to navigate to destination location. The UGV is controlled by a Graphical User Interface (GUI) using a computer