Navigation and GPS based path control of an autonomous vehicle

In this work the navigation and GPS based trajectory control of an unmanned autonomous vehicle is introduced. The caterpillar tread like mobile vehicle with duo cycle drive is equipped with a mobile GPS and micro controller. To get accurate position data, a DGPS (Differential GPS) with a local base station is used. In order to let the vehicle to follow a desired trajectory, a reference path is given by using Way Points as GPS data's to micro controller, which provide the position and orientation control of the vehicle. The instant position and orientation of the vehicle in accordance to an assigned plane coordinate frame are calculated by micro controller from detected latitude and longitude values (land coordinates) of mobile GPS, which receive corrected on line data's from base station. The duo cycle vehicle is driven with geared DC motors, which are equipped with chained caterpillar tread drives, so that it can have better motion, clambering and tracking performances. Successful navigation and path following results are obtained with several experiments by various control applications