Design of a minimalist autonomous robotic vehicle

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.