<title>Evaluating a PID, pure pursuit, and weighted steering controller for an autonomous land vehicle</title>

Abstract

Wright Laboratory, at Tyndall AFB, Florida, has contracted the University of Florida to develop autonomous navigation systems for a variety of robotic vehicles, capable of performing tasks associated with the location and removal of bombs and mines. One of the tasks involves surveying closed target ranges for unexploded buried munitions. Accuracy in path following is critical to the task. There are hundreds of acres that currently require surveying. The sites are typically divided into regions, where each mission can take up to 4.5 hours. These sites are usually surveyed along parallel rows. By improving the accuracy of path following, the distance between the rows can be increased to nearly the detection with of the ground penetrating sensors, resulting in increased acreage surveyed per mission. This paper evaluates a high-level PID and a pure pursuit steering controller. The controllers were combined into a weighted solution so that the desirable features of each controller is preserved. This strategy was demonstrated in simulation and implemented on a Navigation Test Vehicle. For a test path of varying curvature, the average lateral control error was 2 cm at a vehicle sped of 1.34 m/s.