Unmanned ground vehicle simulation with the Virtual Autonomous Navigation Environment

Unmanned and autonomous ground vehicles have the potential to revolutionize military and civilian navigation. Military vehicles, however, present unique challenges related to autonomous navigation that are not encountered in civilian applications. These include a high percentage of off-road navigation, navigation in hostile environments, navigation in GPS-denied environments, and navigation in urban environments where little data regarding road networks are available. These unique challenges require a deliberate approach for developing robust, reliable autonomous and unmanned systems that features extensive testing for performance and safety features in a wide variety of environments and conditions. In order to enable this approach, we developed a computational tool for simulating and predicting the performance of unmanned and autonomous ground vehicles in realistic environmental conditions. This tool, the Virtual Autonomous Navigation Environment, is discussed in this paper.