Development of an Integrated Mobile Robot System at CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) June 1987 Annual Report

摘要

Abstract : This report describes progress in development of an integrated mobile robot system at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute from July 1986 to June 1987. This research was sponsored by DARPA as part of the Strategic Computing Vision Program. Our program includes a broad agenda of research in the development of mobile robot vehicles. In the year covered by this report, we addressed two major areas in vehicle development (NAVLAB vehicle and Robot control system) and two major areas in robot architecture development (CODGER blackboard and Navigation architecture). We built the NAVLAB mobile robot vehicle by outfitting a commercial truck chassis with computer-controlled drive and steering controls and a set of on-board computer workstations. The NAVLAB serves as a mobile navigation laboratory that allows researchers to interact intensively with the system during testing and execution. We also developed a real-time controller system for the NAVLAB using a collection of coordinated processors and software. The CODGER blackboard system incorporate substantial features for geometric reasoning and task synchronization that have been incorporated in blackboards before. We also developed the Driving Pipeline architecture for coordinating road following, obstacle avoidance, and vehicle motion control. This hardware and software combination is the basis for the NEw Generation System (NGS) for robot vision and navigation, which will tie together existing and emerging technologies.