Autonomous vehicle coordination with wireless sensor and actuator networks
Mihai Marin-Perianu, Stephan Bosch, Raluca Marin-Perianu, Hans Scholten, Paul Havinga · ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems · 2010
A coordinated team of mobile wireless sensor and actuator nodes can bring numerous benefits for various applications in the field of cooperative surveillance, mapping unknown areas, disaster management, automated highway and space exploration. This article explores the idea of mobile nodes using vehicles on wheels, augmented with wireless, sensing, and control capabilities. One of the vehicles acts as aleader, being remotely driven by the user, the others represent thefollowers. Each vehicle has a low-power wireless sensor node attached, featuring a 3D accelerometer and a magnetic compass. Speed and orientation are computed in real time using inertial navigation techniques. The leader periodically transmits these measures to the followers, which implement a lightweight fuzzy logic controller for imitating the leader's movement pattern. We report in detail on all development phases, covering design, simulation, controller tuning, inertial sensor evaluation, calibration, scheduling, fixed-point computation, debugging, benchmarking, field experiments, and lessons learned.