Gulliver: Design and Implementation of a Miniature Vehicular System

Traffic increases all over the world and problems such as toxic emissions and congestion are consequences of that. To encounter those problems and to optimize traffic throughput and safety, a miniature vehicular test platform that can be used together with simulation tools can be very useful.<br><br> This project deals with the construction, control, communication and navigation of the autonomous 1:8 scale miniature vehicles used in the Gulliver project. The goal is to make the vehicles drive along a generated route, do lane changing between routes and to write software to interface with these vehicles.<br><br> Part of the work has been spent on a custom motor controller used to control brushless DC motors, for which many safety mechanisms were implemented. Other areas covered include the fusion of several sensors with Ranging and Communication Modules to achieve indoor localization and algorithms to drive the vehicle autonomously along a pre-defined route while accepting high-level commands such as stop, go and change lanes from external sources. Another part of the project was to evaluate the high-level commands using MICAz motes that run a virtual service agent to act as virtual traffic lights.<br><br> At the end all of the goals were achieved and the vehicles were able to drive along a route and accept commands from the MICAz motes. This is very useful as many details that not always are covered by pure simulations can be included while it is much easier and less costly than the same implementation with full-scale vehicles