Localization is responsible for using the robot sensors (i.e., the UGV wheel encoders, IMU data, and gps measurements) to estimate the position of the robot. GPS waypoint navigation consists of two key components: localization, and navigation. Running autonomy software on a 500 lb robot can be scary, so we’re glad that the system was thoroughly tested beforehand, and works perfectly! To verify that the software functions hardware agnostically, Steve and the Clearpath software team also deployed it on the much larger Warthog UGV (outfitted with a Novatel GPS and a Lord GX5-25 IMU). ![]() In addition to supporting high accuracy RTK, the Duro includes a built in Bosch BMI160 IMU and BMM150 Magnetometer. THE SETUPįor development and testing of the GPS navigation software, Steve’s primary setup consisted of a Jackal UGV, paired with the rugged Duro GPS from Swift Navigation and the UM7 inertial measurement unit (IMU) from Redshift Labs. Over the past semester, Steve has been working away at selecting and integrating the right payload suite, perfecting the fusion of sensor data, and creating a usable interface to easily select a waypoint and send the robot on its way. For this project with Clearpath, he’s developed a robust, repeatable GPS Waypoint Navigation system for Clearpath’s family of outdoor robots. Steve’s research is a cross between mechanical and structural engineering, focusing on using mobile robots to perform infrastructure assessment and inspection. That’s why Clearpath and Veerum, with the help of a Mitacs grant, partnered with Steve Phillips, a civil engineering graduate student from the University of Waterloo. This has been done in research projects and papers a number of times, but scalable hardware and software packages to enable this on production ready field robots are few and far between. An added bonus would be not bumping into anything along the way. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, GPS Waypoint Navigation is the ability to provide a robot with a set of GPS waypoints (i.e., a set of latitude / longitude pairs), and have the robot autonomously navigate from its current location to each of the defined waypoints. For outdoor robotics, one of the key capabilities for autonomous use-cases is GPS Waypoint Navigation.
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