Design of Multi-Sensor-Based Open Architecture Integrated Navigation System for Localization of UGV

The UGV is one of the special field robot developed for mine detection, surveillance and transportation. To achieve successfully the missions of the UGV, the accurate and reliable navigation data should be provided. This paper presents design and implementation of multi-sensor-based open architecture integrated navigation for localization of UGV. The presented architecture hierarchically classifies the integrated system into four layers and data communications between layers are based on the distributed object oriented middleware. The navigation manager determines the navigation mode with the QoS information of each navigation sensor and the integrated filter performs the navigation mode-based data fusion in the filtering process. Also, all navigation variables including the filter parameters and QoS of navigation data can be modified in GUI and consequently, the user can operate the integrated navigation system more usefully. The conventional GPS/INS integrated system does not guarantee the long-term reliability of localization when GPS solution is not available by signal blockage and intentional jamming in outdoor environment. The presented integration algorithm, however, based on the adaptive federated filter structure with FDI algorithm can integrate effectively the output of multi-sensor such as 3D LADAR, vision, odometer, magnetic compass and zero velocity to enhance the accuracy of localization result in the case that GPS is unavailable. The field test was carried out with the UGV and the test results show that the presented integrated navigation system can provide more robust and accurate localization performance than the conventional GPS/INS integrated system in outdoor environments.