Vehículo robótico: autónomo y teleoperado con una PDA

a four wheeled land robotic vehicle (rv) has been developed in order to perform autonomous systematic routes. the navigation track is accomplished with the information provided by an odometer and an electronic compass. the rv is equipped with an electronic ultrasonic sensor for obstacle detection. the coordinates of the designed track are set in a virtual space with several points which represents the work space. these points are transmitted from the control panel to the rv with a personal digital assistant (pda) using a graphic user interface (gui). the communication between the rv and the control panel is achieved with a bidirectional radio modem link. the rv can also be operated manually; in this case the pda is used like a conventional remote control. the rv operation mode can be changed at any time. the robotic vehicle was tested in a basket ball court in the autonomous and manually operation modes. one application for this rv is to analyze the viability of a navigation algorithm based on two orthogonal positioning gps antennas. results show that the rv is a trusty and reliable tool to perform systematic routes.