Accurate and reliable navigation algorithm for off-road mobile robots
Résumé
The evolution of population needs, together with the necessity of environment preservation, rise important issues related to the way the human production have to progress. It is for instance the case in agriculture area, where the production have to increase in order to feed a growing population, while the environmental damage must decrease. Since current production processes favor one or the other of these objectives, new tools needs to be developed in order to address both of them. In this framework, mobile robotic can constitute a promising solution, since an accurate work can be achieved autonomously for long time range, offering new potentialities to increase production level while preserving environment. Nevertheless, to solve such a challenge, the considered devices must be accurate, fast and reliable despite of their motion in an off-road context, inducing rough dynamics and many risks for their integrity. The research leaded in the TIMS Research Federation aims at developing autonomous mobile robots in off-road environment able to meet such requirements. This paper presents a navigation algorithm, which contributes to tackle some of the problems rising in such a context. More precisely, a reliable and accurate path tracking algorithm is presented. Advances in localization, motion control and stability control are more particularly described. Above the agriculture area, the application of such automatic device can bring important help for intervention in hazardous areas in general.