Unmanned Tracked Ground Vehicle for Natural Environments

The deployment of an autonomous and teleoperated vehicle in tropical environments presents numerous challenges due to the extreme conditions encountered. This paper presents the transformation of a M113 Armoured Personnel Carrier into an autonomous and teleoperated vehicle for operation in jungle-like conditions. The system was partitioned into functional systems: Vehicle Control/Mobility, Piloting, Visual Guidance, Teleoperation and Communications. Details of the system architecture and major components are included. Emphasis is made on the perception mechanisms developed for visual guidance, the vehicle conversion into a computer-controlled system and the implementation of navigation algorithms for localisation and path planning. A suite of onboard active and passive sensors is used in the visual guidance system. Data fusion is performed on the outputs of the different types of the sensors. The fusion result fed to the path planner that generates heading and speed commands to manoeuvre the vehicle towards the desired position. The vehicle controller executes the speed and heading commands and ensures the vehicle fast and safe response. The results from field trials completed in tropical forest conditions that are unique to the region are included.