Autonomous Vehicle Control and Obstacle Avoidance Concepts Oriented to Meet the Challenging Requirements of Realistic Missions

This paper presents the control and obstacle avoidance concepts for off-road autonomous vehicle. The hierarchical control system includes three levels which mimic driver's actions: activating the actuators, maintaining desired off-road path, that is bounded by natural obstacles. The main achievement of the proposed control system, proven in extensive field-tests, is operating at high speeds in harsh terrains with accuracy better than 1 meter, while maintaining vehicle dynamic stability during all maneuvers. The high performance is preserved also when driving on sparse waypoints database and in obstacle-dense environments. The obstacle avoidance algorithm was designed with emphasis on efficiency: avoidance path is constructed in real-time without slowing the vehicle down. In the Qualification-Inspection-Demonstration phase of the DARPA Grand Challenge Race 2004 the vehicle avoided all 13 obstacles in a record time of 6:45 minutes