Development of an Autonomous Mobile Robot - Control, SLAM, Planning, Exploration
Robotic Systems Laboratory, University of Michigan
This work was completed for the lab as a team project by a group of 4.
My contribution to this work : My major contributions include development and tuning of the PID Controller, development of the Particle Filter localization module and A* planning module.
Problem Description
Implementing and analyzing the various modules of an autonomous mobile robot.
Doing so, involves developing algorithms for
Control of a differential drive robot
Mapping of the environment using a LIDAR
Localizing the robot within the environment
Plan the trajectory the robot has to take
Exploring the region and come up with a viable trajectory
Project overview
In this project, the autonomous mobile robot was assembled, development of a complete software stack for the robot from control to exploration and completing various tasks, performing various graphical analyses on the performance of the robot
Key achievements
Development of
PID with feedforward control for the differential drive
Occpancy Grid based Mapping of the environment
Particle filter based localization of the robot
A* algorithm for path planning
Frontier-search exploration algorithm
Analysis of/over
Velocity set point
Looping over square paths, returning to same location
Particles distribution over a square path, ESS* analysis
Statistics over successful planning
* - Effective Sample Size
Control
As an illustration of the work done at the low level control, shown here are the motor calibration results and trajectories over a square path
SLAM - Particle Filter Localization, Occupancy Grid Mapping
A Map generated with obstacles in the environment, and the distribution of particles over a trajectory is shown
Project outcome
Various tasks were completed to test the system and its robustness. Results from some of the tasks are shown here
SLAM Path vs Odometry Path
Exploration task - Explore region and return home