An intelligent, predictive control approach to the high-speed cross-country autonomous navigation problem

Abstract

Autonomous robot vehicles promise many ultimate civilian, military, and space applications. Off-road autonomous vehicles must engage the world exactly as they find it without relying on having it engineered to suit them. For this reason, offroad autonomous navigation is one of the most difficult automation challenges. Previous work in the area has been disappointing from the perspective of the speeds attained, and the inability of systems to travel long distances autonomously. Indeed, no system has travelled an autonomous mile or exceeded 3 m/s speeds. To date, no off-road system has approached the capabilities needed to address real applications. This thesis examines and proposes a solution to the problem of high speed autonomous navigation of outdoor vehicles. As a systems-level effort, aspects of perception, path planning, position estimation, and to a lesser extent, strategic planning and motion control are considered. The emphasis of the work has been to assess the fundamental requirements of the problem, and to validate the conclusions