The CMU system for mobile robot navigation

Abstract

This paper describes the current status of the Autonomous Land Vehicle research at Carnegie-Mellon University's Robotics Institute, focusing primarily on the system architecture. We begin with a discussion of the issues concerning outdoor navigation, then describe the various perception, planning, and control components of our system that address these issues. We describe the CODGER software system for integrating these components into a single system, synchronizing the data flow between them in order to maximize parallelism. Our system is able to drive a robot vehicle continuously with two sensors, a color camera and a laser rangefinder, on a network of sidewalks, up a bicycle slope, and through a curved road through an area populated with trees. Finally, we discuss the results of our experiments, as well as problems uncovered in the process and our plans for addressing them.