Performance Evaluation of Sensor Combinations on Mobile Robots for Automated Platoon Control

S. Crawford, M.E. Cannon, D. Létourneau, P. Lepage and F. Michaud

Abstract:	Autonomous absolute navigation of vehicles is still a distant concept. However, autonomous relative navigation of vehicles is a much more feasible task. The concept of Collaborative Driving Systems (CDS) involves linking several vehicles together using in-vehicle positioning and control systems as well as inter-vehicle communication. Joining vehicles in a platoon will have many benefits, including increasing road capacity, improving safety, and reducing driver fatigue and stress. In the development of such a system, there are three levels of implementation. Firstly, software simulation may be used. Next, real sensors on low cost test beds such as robots can be used. Finally, real sensors on real vehicles can be used. This paper focuses on the second level. Various sensors are mounted on mobile robots. The lead robot is manually controlled, while another robot is left to autonomously follow. The sensors on the robots include GPS, a digital camera, and a laser scanner. The primary sensor is GPS, as this is likely to give the highest accuracy in carrier phase fixed-ambiguity mode. The other sensors are used primarily to augment GPS when GPS observations are unavailable, and to improve the ambiguity resolution process. All tests described here are performed post-mission, simulating real time processing. Results show that GPS gives very high accuracy relative positions, resulting in high accuracy distance measurements. However, local angle can not be consistently or accurately provided by a single antenna GPS system. The digital camera provides continuous distance and angle measurements, though the distance measurements are not as accurate as the GPS results. The laser scanner also provides distance and angle measurements that were high accuracy, except for the many occasions in which an incorrect target was identified. GPS combined with either auxiliary sensor resulted in superior performance, by reducing time to fixing ambiguities, and improving accuracy during GPS data outage and float ambiguity positioning.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 17th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2004) September 21 - 24, 2004 Long Beach Convention Center Long Beach, CA
Pages:	706 - 717
Cite this article:	Crawford, S., Cannon, M.E., Létourneau, D., Lepage, P., Michaud, F., "Performance Evaluation of Sensor Combinations on Mobile Robots for Automated Platoon Control," Proceedings of the 17th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GNSS 2004), Long Beach, CA, September 2004, pp. 706-717.
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