Date of Award

6-1-2013

Document Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

M.S.

Organizational Unit

Daniel Felix Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science

First Advisor

Matthew J. Rutherford, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Dr. Ing. Kimon P. Valavanis

Third Advisor

Michail Kontitsis

Keywords

Formation control, Leader-follower, Mechatronics, Mobile robots, Unmanned ground vehicles, XMOS

Abstract

In recent years, formation control of autonomous unmanned vehicles has become an active area of research with its many broad applications in areas such as transportation and surveillance. The work presented in this thesis involves the design and implementation of small unmanned ground vehicles to be used in leader-follower formations. This mechatronics project involves breadth in areas of mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering design. A vehicle with a unicycle-type drive mechanism is designed in 3D CAD software and manufactured using 3D printing capabilities. The vehicle is then modeled using the unicycle kinematic equations of motion and simulated in MATLAB/Simulink. Simple motion tasks are then performed onboard the vehicle utilizing the vehicle model via software, and leader-follower formations are implemented with multiple vehicles.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Christopher D. Brune

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

80 p.

Discipline

Robotics, Electrical engineering, Computer engineering

Download



Share

COinS