Design and Evaluation of an Autonomous Vehicle Based on GPS Navigation

Abstract: This thesis has been done in the field of robotics. The focus of this project is to design an autonomous vehicle following a desired path by a RTK (Real Time Kinematic) GPS, including designing prototype PCB(Printed Circuit Board) layout, finding sensors and components for the system, designing and simulating the control system and making software. The system is based on a robotic vehicle with three wheels where two of them are driving. An ARM CORTEX A9 based controller is running the system. In software, in order to do the sensor fusion to reduce noise influence in the system, a Kalman filter is implemented. System stability is achieved by implementing a PID controller. The study concludes that an autonomous vehicle can reach an accuracy of ±5cm by using the RTK-GPS.