Automatization of vehicle for participation in Elrob 2008
This is a project in the project course Mechanical systems.
The aim of the project has been to automatize an existing vehicle
for participation in Elrob 2008 and develope a belonging control
station.
Elrob 2008 is a trial which focuses on the question, can robot
systems effectively support people in dangerous situations in the
near future? To answer this question the robot is tested in various
scenarios. The scenarios especially require autonomous behavior
and accurate positioning of the robot.
The robot is controlled remotely from a control station which
communicates with the robot using WLAN. Algorithms needed for
the scenarios are written in C++ and then implemented with
Player/Stage on a Linux system.
Software interface
The robot control interface Player/Stage is used for
communication between hardware and software. The
communication is handled by drivers which publish
the data to built in interfaces which then can be
subscribed by the client programs. Player/Stage is
open source software with C++ as main language.
Since Player/Stage is open source, all software can
be modified arbitrary to fit the given .
Player robot interface
Robot positioning
The robot uses a rategyro, a GPS unit and the
odometry to estimate its position. This is done by
using an Extended Kalman filter.
Driving modes
The robot can be run in different modes to
perform a desired task. The two main modes
are the Follow GPS mode and the Follow Me
mode.
- gps position.
- odometry position
- Kalman estimation
The follow GPS mode enables the robot to
follow a line calculated from coordinates
clicked in a map. A collision avoidance
algorithm is also implemented which evades
the obstacles by calculating a new line to
follow around the obstacle.
The Follow Me mode enables the robot to
follow a target with a given geometry. A
Kalman filter is used to estimate the position of
the target.
Alessandro Dell’Amico
Fredrik Karlsson
Thomas Nordin
Fredrik Nyman
Pernilla Ottosson