ECE 699    Mobile Robots, Navigation, Control and Remote Sensing

 

Dr. Gerald Cook

 

 

Prerequisites: ECE 521 or equivalent

 

Course to be offered Fall 2003, Thursday 4:30 to 7:10 PM

 

Seven mini-projects to be assigned with due dates each two weeks.

 

Topics

 

1.Kinematic models: models of differing fidelity and complexity, differential equations, discrete-time models, simulation of robot motion      

 

2.Robot Position Measurement and Navigation: GPS, IMU, Dead Reckoning using Encoders, longitude and latitude, UTM coordinates, satellite visibility, performance specifications. 

 

3.Robot Attitude Measurement: Notion of yaw, pitch and roll. Rotation matrices, Inclinometer/Compass, Array of Multiple GPS receivers, Inertial Platform, performance specifications  

 

4.Robot Control: Following a commanded heading or a commanded destination. Heading control and speed control, control algorithms, analysis and practical considerations, simulations, includes random disturbances

 

5.Application of Kalman Filtering: Improved position estimates, inferred attitude estimates, i.e. estimates of some states without measurements, improved attitude estimates using measurements, comparison of inferential estimates with estimates based on numerical differences, illustration through simulations. 

 

6.Remote Sensing: Radar, Infrared, Homogeneous Transformations, SAR image forming, converting sensor coordinates to ground coordinates, projecting field of view onto earth, geo-location of detected targets, effect of non-horizontal field of view on accuracy of geo-location.

 

7.Pointing of sensors at specific targets: Pan and tilt units, ranging lasers, computing the pointing angle to a target, determination of ground coordinates of sensed objects.  

 

Project Questions for Mobile Robot Course