Developing sensors and real-time controlling software for a robot

An ongoing development at University of Debrecen, Faculty of Informatics is to convert a commercially available remote controlled all-terrain robot into an autonomous one. In the present phase our goal is to prepare the vehicle for autonomous tasks. To move autonomously, the robot needs to know some information about its surroundings. Therefore, some sensors are necessary to be developed. Till now, GPS receiver, accelerometer, magnetic field sensor and eight ultrasonic based distance sensors have been developed and connected. As we want the robot to solve tasks, we need to place a processing unit on board. There are two options we are working with. One is Altera's Development and Education board 2, the other is National Instruments' Single Board RIO 9632. Software development is in progress for these platforms simultaneously. Various collections of sensors and high performance real-time control unit make the robot capable of being great test device of complex autonomous algorithms, such as route following and path finding algorithms. A state-of-art report is presented.