Design of a minimalist autonomous robotic vehicle
Name
314403687-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
6.93 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
90c2082a7997733c564108efb989fb52
Author(s)
Spadafora, Mark (Mark A.)
Advisor(s)
John J. Leonard.
Date Issued
2008
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to investigate design alternatives for the creation of a minimalist autonomous robotic vehicle, based on the Ford Escape. The work builds on prior work performed by the MIT DARPA Urban Challenge team, which competed in the national DARPA Urban Challenge NQE and UCE events in October and November 2007. The MIT team pursued an ambitious design that was rich in both sensors and computation. The excessive amount of equipment and computing power throughout the current vehicle make it too expensive and unreasonable to go into actual production. The goal for this work is to revisit the design approach of the MIT team, and from a Mechanical Engineering perspective, to perform a new conceptual design that would bridge the gap between the current vehicle and present in production technologies. By developing a minimalist sensor/processor configuration, the Ford Escape can more closely reflect a present day vehicle, in both appearance and cost, and be more viable for future production. Using the Ford Escape rapid prototype vehicle, the previous installation was stripped out in order to design, re-engineer, and implement a configuration that will allow new research in affordable autonomy and active safety for in-production vehicles.
Description
Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2008.
Includes bibliographical references (leaf 18).
Subjects
Mechanical Engineering.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
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