Vision-based guidance for an automated roving vehicle

A controller designed to guide an automated vehicle to a specified target without external intervention is described. The intended application is to the requirements of planetary exploration, where substantial autonomy is required because of the prohibitive time lags associated with closed-loop ground control. The guidance algorithm consists of a set of piecewise-linear control laws for velocity and steering commands, and is executable in real time with fixed-point arithmetic. The use of a previously-reported object tracking algorithm for the vision system to provide position feedback data is described. Test results of the control system on a breadboard rover at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are included.