Toward Reliable Off Road Autonomous Vehicles Operating in Challenging Environments
Abstract
The DARPA PerceptOR program has implemented a rigorous evaluative test program which fosters the development of field relevant outdoor mobile robots. Autonomous ground vehicles were deployed on diverse test courses throughout the USA and quantitatively evaluated on such factors as autonomy level, waypoint acquisition, failure rate, speed, and communications bandwidth. Our efforts over the three year program have produced new approaches in planning, perception, localization, and control which have been driven by the quest for reliable operation in challenging environments. This paper focuses on some of the most unique aspects of the systems developed by the CMU PerceptOR team, the lessons learned during the effort, and the most immediate challenges that remain to be addressed.
BibTeX
@article{Kelly-2006-9485,author = {Alonzo Kelly and Anthony (Tony) Stentz and Omead Amidi and Michael W. Bode and David Bradley and Antonio Diaz-Calderon and Michael Happold and Herman Herman and Robert Mandelbaum and Thomas Pilarski and Peter Rander and Scott Thayer and Nicholas M. Vallidis and Randon Warner},
title = {Toward Reliable Off Road Autonomous Vehicles Operating in Challenging Environments},
journal = {International Journal of Robotics Research},
year = {2006},
month = {May},
volume = {25},
number = {6},
pages = {449 - 483},
keywords = {autonomous mobility, mobile robot, unmanned ground vehicle, UGV, UAV, obstacle avoidance, motion planning, ladar, stereo},
}