Vehicle and Path Models for Autonomous Navigation

Abstract

Most implementations on the Navlab have used a simple Virtual Vehicle specification to control the vehicle. The Virtual Vehicle is a low level instruction set that accepts conceptual commands and provides a clean separation between a navigation host and vehicle control, masking implementation details of the physical vehicle. While such a scheme is modular and allows various groups of researchers to easily implement their algorithms on the vehicle, the price is paid in terms of limited performance. This cost has been acceptable for most applications so far since they require speeds on the order of 1 mile per hour.