Concept and implementation of a software system on the Autonomous Mobile Outdoor Robot AMOR

The paper describes the software architecture of an autonomous mobile outdoor robot (AMOR). The robot is intended for robust operation in heavy terrain under arbitrary weather condition. The software is implemented in a layered architecture, possessing behaviour based and model based components. The multitude of different sensors is unified by a virtualisation layer, which allows easy reconfiguration and utilisation by the application programmer. The higher levels of the software system realise localisation, navigation and obstacle avoidance. The overall performance of the system has been proven by winning the first prize in autonomous driving in the European land robot trial (ELROB 2007) for urban and non- urban terrain.