Magnetic surveying with an unmanned ground vehicle

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 249-266
Author(s):  
A. Hay ◽  
C. Samson ◽  
L. Tuck ◽  
A. Ellery

With the recent proliferation of unmanned aerial vehicles for geophysical surveying, a novel opportunity exists to develop unmanned ground vehicles in parallel. This contribution features a study to integrate the Husky A200 robotic development platform with a GSMP 35U magnetometer that has recently been developed for the unmanned aerial vehicle market. Methods to identify and reduce the impact of magnetically noisy components on the unmanned ground vehicle platforms are discussed. The noise generated by the platform in laboratory and gentle field conditions, estimated using the fourth difference method for a magnetometer–vehicle separation distance of 121 cm and rotation of the chassis wheels at full speed (1 m/s), is ±1.97 nT. The integrated unmanned ground vehicle was used to conduct two robotic magnetic surveys to map cultural targets and natural variations of the magnetic field. In realistic field conditions, at a full speed of 1 m/s, the unmanned ground vehicle measured total magnetic intensity over a range of 1730 nT at 0.1 m spatial resolution with a productivity of 2651 line metres per hour.

Complexity ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Xiao Liang ◽  
Honglun Wang ◽  
Haitao Luo

The UAV/UGV heterogeneous system combines the air superiority of UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) and the ground superiority of UGV (unmanned ground vehicle). The system can complete a series of complex tasks and one of them is pursuit-evasion decision, so a collaborative strategy of UAV/UGV heterogeneous system is proposed to derive a pursuit-evasion game in complex three-dimensional (3D) polygonal environment, which is large enough but with boundary. Firstly, the system and task hypothesis are introduced. Then, an improved boundary value problem (BVP) is used to unify the terrain data of decision and path planning. Under the condition that the evader knows the position of collaborative pursuers at any time but pursuers just have a line-of-sight view, a worst case is analyzed and the strategy between the evader and pursuers is studied. According to the state of evader, the strategy of collaborative pursuers is discussed in three situations: evader is in the visual field of pursuers, evader just disappears from the visual field of pursuers, and the position of evader is completely unknown to pursuers. The simulation results show that the strategy does not guarantee that the pursuers will win the game in complex 3D polygonal environment, but it is optimal in the worst case.


Author(s):  
Mostafa Salama ◽  
Vladimir V. Vantsevich

Studies of the tire-terrain interaction have mostly been completed on vehicles with steered wheels, but not much work has been done regarding skid-steered Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGV). This paper introduces a mathematical model of normal and longitudinal dynamics of a UGV with four skid-steered pneumatic tire wheels. Unlike the common approach, in which two wheels at each side are treated as one wheel (i.e., having the same rotational speeds), all four wheels in this study are independently driven. Thus the interaction of each tire with deformable terrain is introduced as holonomic constraints. The stress-strain characteristics for tire-soil interaction are analyzed based on modern Terramechanics methods and then further used to determine the circumferential wheel forces of the four tires. Contributions of three components of each tire circumferential force to tire slippages are modeled and analyzed when the tire normal loads vary during vehicle straight-line motion. The considered tire-soil characteristics are mathematically reduced to a form that allows condensing the computational time for on-line computing tire-terrain characteristics. Additionally, rolling resistance of the tires is analyzed and incorporated in the UGV dynamic equations. Moreover, the paper describes the physics of slip power losses in the tire-soil interaction of the four tires and applies it to small skid-steered UGV. This study also formulates an optimization problem of the minimization of the power losses in the tire-soil interactions due to the tire slippage.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 940 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiuliang Jin ◽  
Zhenhai Li ◽  
Clement Atzberger

High-throughput crop phenotyping is harnessing the potential of genomic resources for the genetic improvement of crop production under changing climate conditions. As global food security is not yet assured, crop phenotyping has received increased attention during the past decade. This spectral issue (SI) collects 30 papers reporting research on estimation of crop phenotyping traits using unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery. Such platforms were previously not widely available. The special issue includes papers presenting recent advances in the field, with 22 UAV-based papers and 12 UGV-based articles. The special issue covers 16 RGB sensor papers, 11 papers on multi-spectral imagery, and further 4 papers on hyperspectral and 3D data acquisition systems. A total of 13 plants’ phenotyping traits, including morphological, structural, and biochemical traits are covered. Twenty different data processing and machine learning methods are presented. In this way, the special issue provides a good overview regarding potential applications of the platforms and sensors, to timely provide crop phenotyping traits in a cost-efficient and objective manner. With the fast development of sensors technology and image processing algorithms, we expect that the estimation of crop phenotyping traits supporting crop breeding scientists will gain even more attention in the future.


2010 ◽  
Vol 164 ◽  
pp. 405-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raivo Sell ◽  
Priit Leomar

The paper deals with route planning and message exchange platform development for unmanned vehicle systems like Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Existing solutions for both types of vehicles are discussed and analyzed. Based on existing solution an unified concept is introduced. In this paper we present the study where the universal navigation algorithm planning platform is developed aiming to provide common platform for different unmanned mobile robotic systems. The platform is independent from the application and the target software. The navigation and action planning activity is brought to the abstract layer and specific interfaces are used to produce the target oriented code, describing two different test platforms are presented and co-operation scenarios.


Author(s):  
Madan M. Dabbeeru ◽  
Joshua D. Langsfeld ◽  
Petr Svec ◽  
Satyandra K. Gupta

This paper focuses on the development of a follow behavior for an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) in collaborative scenarios. The scenario being studied involves a human traveling over a rugged terrain on foot. The UGV follows the human. We present an approach for automatically generating a reactive energy-efficient follow behavior that maps the vehicle’s states into motion goals. We start by partitioning the state space that encodes the relationship between the state of the vehicle and the human’s state, and the environment. For each cell in the partitioned state space, we either directly generate the motion goal for the vehicle to execute or a function that produces the motion goal. The motion goal defines not only the location towards which the vehicle should move but also specifies a zero activity zone around the human within which the vehicle is supposed to slow down and remain stationary to save its energy until it gets outside the margin caused by the movement of the human. Our approach utilizes off-line simulations to assess the performance of the generated behavior. Our simulation results show that the automatically generated follow behavior significantly outperforms a simple conservative tracking rule in terms of distance traveled and violation of proximity constraints. We anticipate that the approach presented in this paper will ultimately enable us to implement energy efficient follow behaviors on physical UGVs.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (22) ◽  
pp. 7608
Author(s):  
Miron Kaliszewski ◽  
Maksymilian Włodarski ◽  
Jarosław Młyńczak ◽  
Bartłomiej Jankiewicz ◽  
Lukas Auer ◽  
...  

In this article, we present a versatile gas detector that can operate on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or unmanned ground vehicle (UGV). The device has six electrochemical modules, which can be selected to measure specific gases, according to the mission requirements. The gas intake is realized by a miniaturized vacuum pump, which provides immediate gas distribution to the sensors and improves a fast response. The measurement data are sent wirelessly to the operator’s computer, which continuously stores results and presents them in real time. The 2 m tubing allows measurements to be taken in places that are not directly accessible to the UGV or the UAV. While UAVs significantly enhanced the versatility of sensing applications, point gas detection is challenging due to the downwash effect and gas dilution produced by the rotors. In our work, we demonstrated the method of downwash effect reduction at aerial point gas measurements by applying a long-distance probe, which was kept between the UAV and the examined object. Moreover, we developed a safety connection protecting the UAV and sensor in case of accidental jamming of the tubing inside the examined cavity. The methods presented provide an effective gas metering strategy using UAVs.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (S) ◽  
pp. 21-31
Author(s):  
Boris S. ALESHIN ◽  
Alexander I. CHERNOMORSKY ◽  
Eduard D. KURIS ◽  
Konstantin S. LELKOV ◽  
Maxim V. IVAKIN

Through-flight inspection of the outer surface of the aircraft is necessary to identify possible damage to the surface of the aircraft caused by metal fatigue, lightning, birds collision, etc. The article discusses the method of robotic inspection of the outer surface of the aircraft in its open air parking area. The robotic complex (RC) consists of an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) and an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) interconnected by a tether mechanism (TM). The algorithm of the RC functioning is presented. The main attention is paid to the formation of the TM control and the features of its work, ensuring the prevention of collisions of UAV with aircraft during extreme wind actions on UAV. The study of the most critical mode of the complex operation under extreme wind actions on an unmanned aerial vehicle is carried out. The results of modeling the typical process of the RC operation in an abnormal conditions of extreme wind exposure to UAV are presented.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Qin Wang ◽  
Hua Chen ◽  
Junwei Tian ◽  
Jia Wang ◽  
Yu Su

This paper addresses a multiobjective Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) and Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGVs) collaboration scheduling problem in which UAVs must be recharged periodically during a persistent task, such as wireless communication and making aerial panoramic VR video by UAV. The proposal is to introduce a UGV/UAV cooperative system in which UAVs should be recharged by UGVs periodically, and also, the UGVs have to visit their task points expect for the recharge points. The objective of the problem is to schedule and plan paths with the tradeoff of path length and makespan for UAVs and UGVs. The mathematical model which can be considered a combinatorial multiobjective optimization problem is presented firstly, and the solution of the problem is composed of presubsolution and postsubsolution. The multiobjective adaptive large neighborhood is hybrid with the Pareto local search (MOALP) to resolve the problem. The experimental result shows that the proposed algorithm outperforms the compared algorithms on the rendezvous planning problem for UAVs and UGVs working collaboratively in intelligent tasks.


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