CajunBot
Encyclopedia
CajunBot refers to the autonomous ground vehicles developed by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette
for the DARPA Grand Challenge
s. CajunBot was featured on CNN
and on the Discovery Channel
science series Robocars.
CajunBot's custom AGV software, CBSystem, has artificial intelligence
path planning capabilities, as well as visualization and simulation components.
The hardware repertoire of CajunBot includes a high grade GPS/INS
positioning unit to navigate a designated route while detecting and avoiding obstacles using LIDAR
laser-ranging units.
In 2002, DARPA announced the first Grand Challenge: "Build a robotic vehicle able to travel unassisted on a predefined path of about 130 miles through the Mojave Desert. The fastest robot to navigate the course in less than 10 hours will take home $1 million." The first competition was scheduled in March 2004.
After learning of the Challenge in 2003, a small group of UL Lafayette students and professors joined together to see if they could take on the task of designing a completely autonomous vehicle. "GPS Bot" was engineered as a proof-of-concept, using a small remote controlled car coupled with a micro controller and GPS sensor. "GPS Bot" was able to navigate pre-programmed GPS waypoints without any human interaction.
Branding themselves as "Team CajunBot", (UL Lafayette's athletic teams are referred to as the Ragin' Cajuns) the group was able to have the first CajunBot vehicle ready within a few short months. "CajunBot" was built on a 6-wheeled all-terrain vehicle commonly used for hunting in the swamps and marshlands.
Team CajunBot, energized by the tremendous support from the Lafayette community, defied odds and competed successfully in the qualification rounds, earning a place among the 13 teams selected to compete in the finals, out of 106 initial applicants.
No team managed to complete the 2004 Grand Challenge course, but DARPA was encouraged by the results. It brought together engineers and inventors and managed to channel their energies into the development of important technologies designed to save American lives on the battlefield.
In the 2005 Grand Challenge, history was made as Stanford University's vehicle, Stanley, crossed the finish line after making the 132-mile course in 6 hours and 52 minutes.
As envisioned by DARPA, the 2004 and 2005 Grand Challenges successfully accelerated development of the core technology behind fully autonomous battlefield vehicles. But the technology was hardly battle ready.
The Urban Challenge required teams "to build a robotic vehicle that can operate in urban traffic, finding its own path while also following traffic rules".
Each team was provided a GPS map of an urban cityscape, simulating military supply missions in an urban setting. Traveling among manned and robotic vehicle traffic, the team vehicles traveled through required points in the mock city. Teams were required to complete the 60-mile course safely in less than six hours.
Team CajunBot was a semi-finalist. being eliminated in the final round of cuts due to an unexpected collision with a roadside vehicle. The team's progress leading up to the challenge was documented in the Discovery Science series Robocars.
for use on the Linux
operating system.
Capabilities of CBSystem (see also: Important programs in CBSystem):
"CNN producer Marsha Walton said the crew decided on CajunBot as a subject because of its uniqueness and freshness to the contest."
, CajunBot was one of 10 teams selected to be featured on the Discovery Channel
science series "Robocars". The 6 part documentary series chronicled the progress of the teams as they struggled for the $2 million grand prize.
Team CajunBot was featured prominently in the 2nd and 3rd episodes, which aired July 21 & 28 2008, respectively.
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, or UL Lafayette, is a coeducational, public research university located in Lafayette, Louisiana, in the heart of Acadiana...
for the DARPA Grand Challenge
DARPA Grand Challenge
The DARPA Grand Challenge is a prize competition for driverless vehicles, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the most prominent research organization of the United States Department of Defense...
s. CajunBot was featured on CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
and on the Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
science series Robocars.
CajunBot's custom AGV software, CBSystem, has artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
path planning capabilities, as well as visualization and simulation components.
The hardware repertoire of CajunBot includes a high grade GPS/INS
Inertial navigation system
An inertial navigation system is a navigation aid that uses a computer, motion sensors and rotation sensors to continuously calculate via dead reckoning the position, orientation, and velocity of a moving object without the need for external references...
positioning unit to navigate a designated route while detecting and avoiding obstacles using LIDAR
LIDAR
LIDAR is an optical remote sensing technology that can measure the distance to, or other properties of a target by illuminating the target with light, often using pulses from a laser...
laser-ranging units.
Inception & 2004 Grand Challenge
In 2002, DARPA announced the first Grand Challenge: "Build a robotic vehicle able to travel unassisted on a predefined path of about 130 miles through the Mojave Desert. The fastest robot to navigate the course in less than 10 hours will take home $1 million." The first competition was scheduled in March 2004.
After learning of the Challenge in 2003, a small group of UL Lafayette students and professors joined together to see if they could take on the task of designing a completely autonomous vehicle. "GPS Bot" was engineered as a proof-of-concept, using a small remote controlled car coupled with a micro controller and GPS sensor. "GPS Bot" was able to navigate pre-programmed GPS waypoints without any human interaction.
Branding themselves as "Team CajunBot", (UL Lafayette's athletic teams are referred to as the Ragin' Cajuns) the group was able to have the first CajunBot vehicle ready within a few short months. "CajunBot" was built on a 6-wheeled all-terrain vehicle commonly used for hunting in the swamps and marshlands.
Team CajunBot, energized by the tremendous support from the Lafayette community, defied odds and competed successfully in the qualification rounds, earning a place among the 13 teams selected to compete in the finals, out of 106 initial applicants.
No team managed to complete the 2004 Grand Challenge course, but DARPA was encouraged by the results. It brought together engineers and inventors and managed to channel their energies into the development of important technologies designed to save American lives on the battlefield.
2005 Grand Challenge
In 2005 DARPA repeated the Challenge, fielded more than 198 team entries. Team CajunBot, again, successfully passed the qualification rounds and earned a place among 23 teams selected to compete in the finals.In the 2005 Grand Challenge, history was made as Stanford University's vehicle, Stanley, crossed the finish line after making the 132-mile course in 6 hours and 52 minutes.
As envisioned by DARPA, the 2004 and 2005 Grand Challenges successfully accelerated development of the core technology behind fully autonomous battlefield vehicles. But the technology was hardly battle ready.
2007 Urban Challenge
Building on the success of previous challenges, DARPA has launched a new competition, dubbed the "Urban Challenge". The event took place in November 2007, set in Victorville, California.The Urban Challenge required teams "to build a robotic vehicle that can operate in urban traffic, finding its own path while also following traffic rules".
Each team was provided a GPS map of an urban cityscape, simulating military supply missions in an urban setting. Traveling among manned and robotic vehicle traffic, the team vehicles traveled through required points in the mock city. Teams were required to complete the 60-mile course safely in less than six hours.
Team CajunBot was a semi-finalist. being eliminated in the final round of cuts due to an unexpected collision with a roadside vehicle. The team's progress leading up to the challenge was documented in the Discovery Science series Robocars.
CajunBot
- Platform: A MAX 6-wheel amphibious all-terrain vehicle with a 25 hp twin-cylinder engine. Fuel capacity of 35 gallons. Top speed 30+ mph. Total weight 1,200 lbs.
- Electronics: Controlled by 2 high-speed AMD computers with a distributed memory system, several microcontrollers, and many custom circuits. A 2-kilowatt electric generator supplies the electrical power.
- Sensors: Two scanning LIDARLIDARLIDAR is an optical remote sensing technology that can measure the distance to, or other properties of a target by illuminating the target with light, often using pulses from a laser...
laser systems, three Doppler radarsRadarRadar is an object-detection system which uses radio waves to determine the range, altitude, direction, or speed of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. The radar dish or antenna transmits pulses of radio...
, and sonar help detect obstacles. C-Nav differential GPS and an Oxford inertial navigation sensorInertial navigation systemAn inertial navigation system is a navigation aid that uses a computer, motion sensors and rotation sensors to continuously calculate via dead reckoning the position, orientation, and velocity of a moving object without the need for external references...
provide exact location information. - Software: CBSystem software developed by Team CajunBot does everything from object detection to path planning. Advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) software developed at UL Lafayette allows CajunBot to pick the shortest path while avoiding obstacles.
- Estimated Cost: $15,000 vehicle, $90,000 electronics, and $70,000 in-kind loaner equipment. Total hardware: $175,000. Not including thousands of hours of custom programming.
CajunBot-II (a.k.a. Ragin'Bot)
- Platform: A 2004 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon with a 4.0 liter gasoline engine and automatic transmission with 4-wheel drive.
- Electronics: Ragin'Bot houses many devices to enable sensor processing and autonomous vehicle control. The CajunBot software "CBSystem" runs on three EPIC form factor computers, each powered by a 1.8 GHz Intel Pentium M processor, housed in a single 1U rackmount case. Several devices convert various serial communications to EthernetEthernetEthernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....
so data can be collected by all computers in the case of a failure of one computer. A custom dual alternator system powers the vehicle and onboard electronics. Redundant DC-to-DC converters transform the alternator voltage into a form usable by the various devices. A custom electronics box (EBOX) houses emergency stop control hardware and provides a central connection for all vehicle control hardware. - Sensors: Two Ibeo LIDARLIDARLIDAR is an optical remote sensing technology that can measure the distance to, or other properties of a target by illuminating the target with light, often using pulses from a laser...
sensors, three SICKSick AGSick AG is a company based in Waldkirch, Germany. It produces sensors and sensor solutions for industrial applications. The company is active in the areas of factory and logistics automation and process automation....
LIDAR sensors and two EatonEaton CorporationEaton Corporation is a global diversified power management company with 2010 sales of $13.7 billion. The company is a leading provider of electrical components and systems for power quality, distribution and control; hydraulics components, systems and services for industrial and mobile equipment;...
Vorad Doppler radar detect obstacles. An Iteris lane departure warning system provides information about the position of the vehicle on the road. A C-Nav GPS receiver provides StarFireStarFire (navigation system)StarFire is a wide-area differential GPS developed by John Deere's NavCom and precision farming groups. StarFire broadcasts additional "correction information" over satellite L-band frequencies around the world, allowing a StarFire-equipped receiver to produce position measurements accurate to well...
differential corrections, and an Oxford inertial navigation sensorInertial navigation systemAn inertial navigation system is a navigation aid that uses a computer, motion sensors and rotation sensors to continuously calculate via dead reckoning the position, orientation, and velocity of a moving object without the need for external references...
provides Kalman filterKalman filterIn statistics, the Kalman filter is a mathematical method named after Rudolf E. Kálmán. Its purpose is to use measurements observed over time, containing noise and other inaccuracies, and produce values that tend to be closer to the true values of the measurements and their associated calculated...
smoothing for GPS data and motion compensation via MEMS gyros and accelerometers. - Software: CBSystem developed by Team CajunBot does everything from object detection to path planning. Advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) software developed at UL Lafayette allows Ragin'Bot to pick the shortest path while avoiding obstacles.
Software
CajunBot's custom AGV software, CBSystem, was primarily developed in C++C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
for use on the Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
operating system.
Capabilities of CBSystem (see also: Important programs in CBSystem):
- Urban path planning for navigation of an RNDFRNDFThe Route Network Definition File specifies accessible road segments and provides information such as waypoints, stop sign locations, lane widths, checkpoint locations, and parking spot locations. The route network has no implied start or end point...
network, while handling lane blockages, stalled vehicles, intersection precedence & queuing, free zone navigation, and parking behavior. - Static and dynamic obstacle detection.
- Visualization of real time sensor data and path planner status, as well as visualization of logged data and simulation data.
- PIDPID controllerA proportional–integral–derivative controller is a generic control loop feedback mechanism widely used in industrial control systems – a PID is the most commonly used feedback controller. A PID controller calculates an "error" value as the difference between a measured process variable and a...
-based steering controller. - Simulation via a physics-based simulator built on the Open Dynamics EngineOpen Dynamics EngineThe Open Dynamics Engine is a physics engine in C/C++. Its two main components are a rigid body dynamics simulation engine and a collision detection engine...
, for simulating the wheels, mass, and suspension of the vehicle, as well as traffic vehicles, point clouds from laser sensors, and more.
CajunBot Day
On June 2, 2004, Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco officially declared Wednesday to be known as "CajunBot day". On this day, the CajunBot vehicle climbed 12 steps of the Louisiana state capital building as Gov. Blanco declared it "an outstanding example of the brainpower we have here in Louisiana and at our universities."CNN Segment
"CajunBot - a six-wheeled all-terrain vehicle - will be traveling across 210 miles of desert terrain as part of a challenge set forth by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense. Team CajunBot most recently gained national media attention when CNN visited the UL Lafayette campus for a segment on its show Next@CNN.""CNN producer Marsha Walton said the crew decided on CajunBot as a subject because of its uniqueness and freshness to the contest."
Robocars Documentary
During the 2007 Urban ChallengeDARPA Grand Challenge (2007)
The third driverless car competition of the DARPA Grand Challenge, was commonly known as the DARPA Urban Challenge. It took place on November 3, 2007 at the site of the now-closed George Air Force Base , in Victorville, California , in the West of the United States...
, CajunBot was one of 10 teams selected to be featured on the Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel
Discovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
science series "Robocars". The 6 part documentary series chronicled the progress of the teams as they struggled for the $2 million grand prize.
Team CajunBot was featured prominently in the 2nd and 3rd episodes, which aired July 21 & 28 2008, respectively.
Algorithms
Some research papers produced from the CajunBot project:- C. Cavanaugh, Design and Integration of the Sensing and Control Subsystems of CajunBot, April 9, 2004 (PDF).
- S. Golconda, Steering Control for a Skid-Steered Autonomous Ground Vehicle at Varying Speed, M.S. Thesis, February 2005 (Full thesis).
- A. Lakhotia, S. Golconda, A. Maida, P. Mejia, A. Puntambekar, G. Seetharaman, and S. Wilson, CajunBot: Architecture and Algorithms, Journal of Field Robotics, 23 (8), 2006, 555-578, DOI: 10.1002/rob.20129, (Full paper).
- A. Maida, S. Golconda, P. Mejia, A. Lakhotia, and C. Cavanaugh, Subgoal-based local navigation and obstacle avoidance using a grid-distance field, International Journal of Vehicle Autonomous Systems (IJVAS), 4 (2-4), 2006, pp. 122–142, (Full paper).
- V. Venkitarakrishnan, CBWare - Distributed Middleware for Autonomous Ground Vehicles, M.S. Thesis, December 2006 (Thesis: front page, body, PPT Presentation).
- A. Puntambekar, Terrain Mapping and Obstacle Detection for Unmanned Autonomous Ground Robots Without Sensor Stabilization, M.S. Thesis, October 18, 2006 (Full thesis, PPT Presentation).
- Solving Urban Transit Problems using SLAM based Algorithms - December 7, 2006
See also
- Autonomous robotAutonomous robotAutonomous robots are robots that can perform desired tasks in unstructured environments without continuous human guidance. Many kinds of robots have some degree of autonomy. Different robots can be autonomous in different ways...
- DARPA Grand Challenge (2004)DARPA Grand Challenge (2004)Announced in 2002, the first DARPA Grand Challenge was a driverless car competition held on March 13, 2004 in the Mojave Desert region of the United States, along a route that follows along the path of Interstate 15 from just before Barstow, California to just past the California-Nevada border in...
- DARPA Grand Challenge (2005)DARPA Grand Challenge (2005)The second driverless car competition of the DARPA Grand Challenge was a off-road course that began at 6:40am on October 8, 2005. All but one of the 23 finalists in the 2005 race surpassed the distance completed by the best vehicle in the 2004 race...
- DARPA Grand Challenge (2007)DARPA Grand Challenge (2007)The third driverless car competition of the DARPA Grand Challenge, was commonly known as the DARPA Urban Challenge. It took place on November 3, 2007 at the site of the now-closed George Air Force Base , in Victorville, California , in the West of the United States...
- University of Louisiana at LafayetteUniversity of Louisiana at LafayetteThe University of Louisiana at Lafayette, or UL Lafayette, is a coeducational, public research university located in Lafayette, Louisiana, in the heart of Acadiana...
