Friday, October 26, 2012

A Rover Ground Control Station (GCS)

I've been working on a GCS that is purpose-built for rovers (aka unmanned ground vehicles, autonomous ground vehicles, etc.).


When I say "for rovers" it means it looks like a proper dashboard. Absent are pictures of planes on gauges, artificial horizons, and altitude indicators. The little vehicle model in Google Earth isn't a Bixler or Quadcopter, it's a Data Bus. :)



The GCS is pretty rough around the edges, just an early alpha, but should offer some visual entertainment for those that stop by my table at the Thompson Robotics Expo later in October.

In the clip below, the application is playing back log data recorded during my 3rd AVC run in June.


The GCS displays speed, current, battery voltage, and heading. It'll soon display bearing to waypoint, show the waypoints on the Google Earth view, and so forth.

I may build it out with more functionality for Data Bus depending on time available before the next AVC.

2 comments:

  1. At a few points in the video it appears that Databus ran off the road. Obviously it didn't, but is this where Databus thought it was, and if so, why did it not appear to correct its error?

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  2. I'm still investigating. I can say from observation that the robot is very consistent, but accuracy could be off. Or there could be a discrepancy between log output and the internal Cartesian position estimate.

    The steering control doesn't account for cross track and doesn't know about where the road is or isn't. All it did was turn to where it thought the next waypoint was.

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