Autonomous land navigation in a structured environment

A hardware system and software developed to perform autonomous navigation of a land vehicle in a structured environment is described. The vehicle used for development and testing of the system was the Jeep Cherokee Mobile Robotics Testbed Vehicle. Since obstacle detection and avoidance have not yet been incorporated into the system, a structured environment is postulated that presumes that the paths to be traversed are free of obstacles. The system performs path planning and execution based on maps constructed using the vehicle's onboard navigation system and mapmaker. The system software, hardware, and performance data are discussed.<<ETX>>