Miniature Autonomous Robotic Vehicle (MARV)

Abstract

Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) has recently developed a 16 cm{sup 3} (1 in{sup 3}) autonomous robotic vehicle which is capable of tracking a single conducting wire carrying a 96 kHz signal. This vehicle was developed to assess the limiting factors in using commercial technology to build miniature autonomous vehicles. Particular attention was paid to the design of the control system to search out the wire, track it, and recover if the wire was lost. This paper describes the test vehicle and the control analysis. Presented in the paper are the vehicle model, control laws, a stability analysis, simulation studies and experimental results.