UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY Performance Evaluation of Sensor Combinations for Mobile Platoon Control

Autonomous relative navigation of vehicles may soon be feasible. The concept of Collaborative Driving Systems (CDS) involves linking several vehicles together in a platoon. This will have many benefits, including increasing road capacity, improving safety, and reducing driver fatigue and stress. This thesis is focused on examining various positioning sensors for potential use in a CDS. Firstly, the use of GPS as a relative positioning sensor is examined. Tests were conducted using four instrumented vehicles, each equipped with a precise GPS position and heading determination system. This enabled the relative position and velocity estimation between vehicles as well as between antennas with a constant inter-antenna baseline, using carrier phase and Doppler observations. Relative position accuracy was shown to be within a few centimetres, while relative velocity was accurate to a few centimetres per second. Secondly, various sensors were mounted on mobile robots. The lead robot was manually controlled, while another robot was left to autonomously follow. The sensors on the robots include GPS, a digital camera, and a laser scanner. Results show that GPS gives very high accurac