Application of parallelized software architecture to an autonomous ground vehicle

Rahul Shakya; Adam Wright; Young Ho Shin; Orko Momin; Steven Petkovsek; Paul Wortman; Prasanna Gautam; Adam Norton

doi:10.1117/12.872646

24 January 2011 Application of parallelized software architecture to an autonomous ground vehicle

Rahul Shakya, Adam Wright, Young Ho Shin, Orko Momin, Steven Petkovsek, Paul Wortman, Prasanna Gautam, Adam Norton

Proceedings Volume 7878, Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XXVIII: Algorithms and Techniques; 787810 (2011) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.872646
Event: IS&T/SPIE Electronic Imaging, 2011, San Francisco Airport, California, United States

Abstract

This paper presents improvements made to Q, an autonomous ground vehicle designed to participate in the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC). For the 2010 IGVC, Q was upgraded with a new parallelized software architecture and a new vision processor. Improvements were made to the power system reducing the number of batteries required for operation from six to one. In previous years, a single state machine was used to execute the bulk of processing activities including sensor interfacing, data processing, path planning, navigation algorithms and motor control. This inefficient approach led to poor software performance and made it difficult to maintain or modify. For IGVC 2010, the team implemented a modular parallel architecture using the National Instruments (NI) LabVIEW programming language. The new architecture divides all the necessary tasks - motor control, navigation, sensor data collection, etc. into well-organized components that execute in parallel, providing considerable flexibility and facilitating efficient use of processing power. Computer vision is used to detect white lines on the ground and determine their location relative to the robot. With the new vision processor and some optimization of the image processing algorithm used last year, two frames can be acquired and processed in 70ms. With all these improvements, Q placed 2^nd in the autonomous challenge.

Citation Download Citation

Rahul Shakya, Adam Wright, Young Ho Shin, Orko Momin, Steven Petkovsek, Paul Wortman, Prasanna Gautam, and Adam Norton "Application of parallelized software architecture to an autonomous ground vehicle", Proc. SPIE 7878, Intelligent Robots and Computer Vision XXVIII: Algorithms and Techniques, 787810 (24 January 2011); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.872646

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