R-Gator: an unmanned utility vehicle

摘要

The R-Gator is an unmanned ground vehicle built on the John Deere 6x4 M-Gator utility vehicle chassis. The vehicle is capable of operating in urban and off-road terrain and has a large payload to carry supplies, wounded, or a marsupial robot. The R-Gator has 6 modes of operation: manual driving, teleoperation, waypoint, direction drive, playback and silent sentry. In direction drive the user specifies a direction for the robot. It will continue in that direction, avoiding obstacles, until given a new direction. Playback allows previously recorded paths, from any other mode including manual, to be played back and repeated. Silent sentry allows the engine to be turned off remotely while cameras, computers and comms remain powered by batteries. In this mode the vehicle stays quiet and stationary, collecting valuable surveillance information. The user interface consists of a wearable computer, monocle and standard video game controller. All functions of the R-Gator can be controlled by the handheld game controller, using at most 2 button presses. This easy to use user interface allows even untrained users to control the vehicle. This paper details the systems developed for the R-Gator, focusing on the novel user interface and the obstacle detection system, which supports safeguarded teleoperation as well as full autonomous operation in off-road terrain. The design for a new 4-wheel, independent suspension chassis version of the R-Gator is also presented.