Modular Design of X-by-wire Systems to Facilitate Autonomous Platform Development

Modular design of steering-by-wire and brake-by-wire and drive-by-wire systems can lead to many benefits in converting normal mobile platforms into autonomous platforms. In this paper, we present modular designs for the three X-by-wire systems on a 14-seater multi-passenger golf cart. The autonomous golf-cart is supposed to operate in confined urban environments such as a university campus, a touristic site, or residential compounds. The design also considers the low-level control of these systems taking into consideration the autonomy requirements for navigation. Finally, several experiments are executed using the golf-cart in order to validate the performance of the designed systems. The experiments show that the speed and accuracy of each of the designed systems are capable of achieving the autonomy requirements.