Implementation and testing of a path tracker for a full-scale Unmanned Ground Vehicle

Sammanfattning: This project is the implementation and testing of a path tracker for a car-sized Unmanned Ground Vehicle. The vehicle, a Toyota Land Cruiser, was provided by SSC and hadpreviously been modified for remote operation. The developed path tracker uses a "follow the carrot" algorithm and has been writtenin C using the Robot Operating Software (ROS) framework and has been integrated intothe vehicles existing ROS powered software. During the implementation, the Gazebo rigid body simulator was used to simulate a simplified vehicle. Integration with the real sensors was performed using a small-scalecar, both indoors with the aid of a Vicon motion capture system and outdoors utilizingonly sensors available to the full-size car. The small-scale tests showed promise, howeverwhen full-scale field tests were performed the results showed some problems and reasonsfor these are discussed.