Autonomous system (mathematics)

About: Autonomous system (mathematics) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1648 publications have been published within this topic receiving 38373 citations.

Semi-autonomous unmanned ground vehicle control system

Abstract: Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs) have advantages over people in a number of different applications, ranging from sentry duty, scouting hazardous areas, convoying goods and supplies over long distances, and exploring caves and tunnels. Despite recent advances in electronics, vision, artificial intelligence, and control technologies, fully autonomous UGVs are still far from being a reality. Currently, most UGVs are fielded using tele-operation with a human in the control loop. Using tele-operations, a user controls the UGV from the relative safety and comfort of a control station and sends commands to the UGV remotely. It is difficult for the user to issue higher level commands such as patrol this corridor or move to this position while avoiding obstacles. As computer vision algorithms are implemented in hardware, the UGV can easily become partially autonomous. As Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) become larger and more powerful, vision algorithms can run at frame rate. With the rapid development of CMOS imagers for consumer electronics, frame rate can reach as high as 200 frames per second with a small size of the region of interest. This increase in the speed of vision algorithm processing allows the UGVs to become more autonomous, as they are able to recognize and avoid obstacles in their path, track targets, or move to a recognized area. The user is able to focus on giving broad supervisory commands and goals to the UGVs, allowing the user to control multiple UGVs at once while still maintaining the convenience of working from a central base station. In this paper, we will describe a novel control system for the control of semi-autonomous UGVs. This control system combines a user interface similar to a simple tele-operation station along with a control package, including the FPGA and multiple cameras. The control package interfaces with the UGV and provides the necessary control to guide the UGV.

Autonomous Driving—A Crash Explained in Detail

Abstract: Since 2017, a research team from the Technical University of Munich has developed a software stack for autonomous driving. The software was used to participate in the Roborace Season Alpha Championship. The championship aims to achieve autonomous race cars competing with different software stacks against each other. In May 2019, during a software test in Modena, Italy, the greatest danger in autonomous driving became reality: A minor change in environmental influences led an extensively tested software to crash into a barrier at speed. Crashes with autonomous vehicles have happened before but a detailed explanation of why software failed and what part of the software was not working correctly is missing in research articles. In this paper we present a general method that can be used to display an autonomous vehicle disengagement to explain in detail what happened. This method is then used to display and explain the crash from Modena. Firstly a brief introduction into the modular software stack that was used in the Modena event, consisting of three individual parts—perception, planning, and control—is given. Furthermore, the circumstances causing the crash are elaborated in detail.By presented and explaining in detail which software part failed and contributed to the crash we can discuss further software improvements. As a result, we present necessary functions that need to be integrated in an autonomous driving software stack to prevent such a vehicle behavior causing a fatal crash. In addition we suggest an enhancement of the current disengagement reports for autonomous driving regarding a detailed explanation of the software part that was causing the disengagement. In the outlook of this paper we present two additional software functions for assessing the tire and control performance of the vehicle to enhance the autonomous.

Development of the human interactive autonomy for the shared teleoperation of mobile robots

Abstract: Manipulation complexity of teleoperation increases the necessity of shared autonomy. However, designing an autonomy while keeping in mind the environmental uncertainty is challenging. This paper proposes a human interactive autonomy for a shared teleoperation. The central concept is a novel methodology of combining the innate cognitive ability of a human operator to arrive at an accurate, and precise solution of an autonomous system for mobile robot shared teleoperation. The resulting system is more efficient and less fatigued than direct teleoperation. This combined approach transfers the human operator's intention, shaped by his cognition about remote environment, to the autonomous system. The intention information input from the operator helps autonomous system perform the given teleoperation tasks more efficiently. For initial feasibility and proof of concept, the intention information is provided to the autonomous system in the form of a path which is acquired by our proposed sketch method. Our novel proposed sketch method allows the operator to sketch the path on the visual feedback image of the remote environments and the information is then transmitted to the autonomous system. Experimental results provide the feasibility and effectiveness of proposed method against prevalent control methods.

Autonomous Flying Under 500 USD Based on RC Aircraft

Abstract: Radio control (RC) aircrafts have been favorite toys of aviation hobbyists for years. Because of their simple configurations and low expense, they can also be used for reconnaissance and surveillance with information-gathering devices under commands of a skillful human pilot. However, control with human in the loop not only degrades the reliability of the flight performance, but also bring restrictions in endurance and accuracy. In order to resolve these issues and extend the usage of RC aircrafts, getting them capable of autonomous navigation is a preferred solution. This paper reports our approach by designing and integrating an autonomous system on a regular RC aircraft to achieve full autonomy while keeping the additional costs almost equivalent to the cheap RC platform. The current platform will be briefly presented, the system architecture and major components will be introduced, and detailed autonomous demonstration flight results will be provided at the end.Copyright © 2011 by ASME