Construction of an Obstacle Map and Its Real-Time Implementation on an Unmanned Ground Vehicle

Real-time obstacle avoidance and navigation are key fields of research in the area of unmanned ground vehicles. The primary requirements of UGV are to detect or sense changes and react to them with human intervention in a safe and efficient manner. The objective of this research is to develop and implement a UGV control system utilizing embedded microcontrollers. This control system must enable the UGV to navigate to the specified waypoints while avoiding obstacles discovered in its path. This research expands the work of UGV by developing and implementing an environment mapping system capable of detecting and localizing potential obstacles from real time sensor data. The real time obstacle mapping system developed in this work automatically generates the Map in PC using an application.

Existing System:
Wireless Cameras were used to navigate the robot through the specified waypoints. But, this method is possible only for short distance. Here, we propose a GPS based navigation system using an application.

Proposed System:
The paper presents the real time embedded implementation of this mapping system on a small Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) to support real time obstacle avoidance. The UGV is controlled by using a RF remote, according to the command from the RF remote the UGV can navigate in the ground. The UGV has ultrasonic sensor, Zigbee transceiver, RF receiver and a GPS receiver interfaced to it. The ultrasonic sensor is used for obstacle avoidance, whenever the ultrasonic sensor finds an obstacle the UGV stops moving. GPS receiver continuously receives the latitude and longitude values from the satellite and these values were sent to PC through Zigbee communication. In PC there will be an application to generate map according to the GPS values. By viewing the map in PC we can move the UGV to desired destination using RF remote control.

Block Diagram:
Monitoring Section:

Power supply

Max232

PC

Control Section:

Power supply

RF Transmitter

Encoder

Robot Section:

Power supply

Decoder LCD

RF Receiver

AT89C51 Microcontroller

MAX232

GPS Receiver

DC Motor Ultrasonic Sensor

Motor Driver DC Motor

Hardware Requirements:
8051 Microcontroller with power supply Ultrasonic Sensor GPS receiver RF transmitter and Receiver Zigbee Transceiver LCD Max232 Keypad Motor Driver Robot Mechanism

Software Requirements:
Embedded C Keil C Compiler

Advantages:
Navigate to the desired destination using Map. Avoids obstacles in its waypoints.