Design of intelligent mobile vehicle system and its global optimal path planning

The intelligent mobile vehicle (IMV) is designed on embedded system with ARM9 and Windows CE.NET embedded operation system (EOS). It is a completely autonomous mobile vehicle system with hardware executive mechanics and corresponding intelligent path planning algorithm. The goal for the IMV is to run from the start point to the end point along the shortest path in any random scene autonomously. There are three problems needed to be solved to fulfill the goal: acquire the scene information, quickly plan out the global shortest path and track the optimal path. The global scene information is got through camera on top, then processed and transmitted to the IMV by radio and the global optimal path is planned out based on improved Ant Colony Algorithm. The IMV tracks the optimal path by controlling the driver wheels with two DC Motors based on fuzzy control method. Many sensors also must be equipped to assist tracking the shortest path. All the algorithms are realized with C++ under Windows CE.NET. The experiments show that the IMV system has a good performance in planning and tracking the global optimal path autonomously.