The Oshkosh-VisLab Joint Efforts on UGVs: Architecture, Integration, and Results

Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) technology plays a key role in Oshkosh Truck Corporation’s (Oshkosh’s) efforts to supply the American military forces and their allies with the tools they need. The US Congress has set an aggressive goal, targeting that one-third of all operational ground combat vehicles will be unmanned by 2015. In working with the armed forces to meet this goal, Oshkosh continues to research both fully autonomous systems and leader-follower concepts. Autonomous or leaderfollower technologies do not necessarily have to mean there are no soldiers in the cab: in some cases soldiers may still remain in the vehicle, but will be free to perform tasks other than driving the vehicle. Oshkosh believes that while UGVs should require less support from the soldiers, they cannot provide any less support to the soldiers. UGVs need to do everything that “conventional” vehicles can do—this includes operating on extreme terrains, hauling a load and even carrying a crew. For over 15 years, the Artificial Vision and Intelligent Systems Lab (VisLab) of the University of Parma has been conducting research in the field of environmental perception for both onand off-road applications. Cameras have been integrated on a plethora of different vehicle platforms with the aim of sensing the presence of obstacles, other road players, potential threats, locating road features such as lane markings and road signs, and even identifying the drivable path in off-road environments. Together with cameras, other sensors have been included in the onboard system. Data fusion techniques have been developed and successfully fielded on many vehicle prototypes. VisLab’s ultimate goal is to apply the results of basic and advanced research in the development of UGVs for unmanned missions in real environments.