Laser-Guided Autonomous Snowplow Design

Samantha Craig, Ryan Kollar, Kuangmin Li, Pengfei Duan, Wouter Pelgrum, Frank van Graas, Maarten Uijt de Haag

Abstract:	A laser-guided autonomous snowplow was designed for participation in the Second Annual Autonomous Snowplow Competition. The snowplow is all-electric and features a four-wheel drive, a 1.07-m wide blade, constant velocity wheel controllers, gyroscopic heading stabilization and a scanning laser for positioning. Because of the use of a single rotating laser, the robot is referred to as the Monocular Autonomously-Controlled Snowplow or M.A.C.S. The vehicle weighs 526 lbs and measures 1.27 m long, 0.96 m wide and 0.97 m tall. A flexible, Matlab®-based development environment was implemented for rapid prototyping and algorithm design. M.A.C.S. uses WiFi communications for remote control and relay of status information, as well as a separate radio-control for power shut-off. During the competition, M.A.C.S. operated fully autonomous to clear snow from two competition fields: a 1-m wide by 10-m long “I”-shaped field, and a “U”-shaped field with a width of 1 m that fits inside a 10-by-5 m rectangle. M.A.C.S. successfully plowed both competition fields and, for doing so, received all of the possible 75 points. The M.A.C.S team also earned an additional 3.16 bonus points out of a possible 5 for time of course completion. In addition, Ohio University received a score of 23.25 points out of a possible 25 for their technical paper and presentations. Ohio University won the competition with a total score of 101.41 points out of a possible 105, including bonus points.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 25th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2012) September 17 - 21, 2012 Nashville Convention Center, Nashville, Tennessee Nashville, TN
Pages:	3773 - 3790
Cite this article:	Craig, Samantha, Kollar, Ryan, Li, Kuangmin, Duan, Pengfei, Pelgrum, Wouter, van Graas, Frank, de Haag, Maarten Uijt, "Laser-Guided Autonomous Snowplow Design," Proceedings of the 25th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2012), Nashville, TN, September 2012, pp. 3773-3790.
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