Background
For autonomous vehicles to be of practical utility they must be able to leave and approach their docking stations on their own. For this to be done in a safe manner, accurate navigation is necessary. While RTK-GPS often can give sufficient accuracy, it is not possible to depend on this system alone since GPS is not always available. The vehicle must therefore be equipped with other sensors, such as lidar, cameras and/or radio systems.
Scope
The topic of this project is docking for an autonomous ferry that is planned to operate between Ravnkloa and Brattøra. The project will build on a previous specialization project and master thesis which explored the possibility of ultra-wide-band (UWB) radio for the docking task.
Proposed Tasks for the 5th year project
- Conduct a literature study sensor fusion for vehicle localization.
- Implement the UWB navigation solution on the ferry.
- Record data and do offline fusion of the UWB data together with navigation data from IMU and GPS-compass.
- Propose methods to handle challenges such as faulty GPS data.
- Analyze results and write report.
Proposed Tasks for the master thesis
The project work aims to be extended into a master thesis for the spring of 2018. Depending on the interest of the students, several important challenges may be addressed:
- Further studies of robustness in sensor fusion.
- Fusion with SLAM based on lidar and/or camera.
- Implementation in closed-loop docking experiments.
Contact
For more information, contact main supervisor Edmund F. Brekke