The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is working on a program to improve the logical support of soldiers in the field by replacing manned resupply missions with autonomous unmanned ground vehicles (UGV). In particular, they are seeking a low-cost perception system that can transform a small jeep-sized vehicle into an autonomous Logistics Connector UGV. In autonomous mode, the vehicle must be capable of navigating secondary roads and off-road over unimproved trails in both urban and mountainous environments at speeds of up to 40mph.
JPL will perform and document a comprehensive trade study to provide a quantitative understanding of the impact of alternative sensor suites/configurations, processing, and algorithms. Target capabilities that will be addressed include:
- Positive and Negative Obstacle Detection
- Terrain Classification (Road, WaterGravelMud, Vegetation)
- Terrain Characterization (Estimation of terra-mechanics properties and/or slip prediction)
- Localization
- Moving Object Detection and Tracking
- People Detection
The sensor modalities that will be considered include visible and non-visible imaging, scanning laser range finders, radar and others.
This work is funded by the Office of Naval Research.
Arturo Rankin - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Defense
