The Smart Car Project: Development and Implementation of a Modular Scaled Test-Bed

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the development, implementation and testing of an inexpensive scaled-prototype “Smart Car Test-Bed”. The test-bed consists of retrofitting a commercially available radio-control (RC) truck with a PC/104 based computer with various embedded sensorand actuatorsubsystems together and multiple modes of communication (radio frequency (RF) and IEEE 802.11b wireless ethernet). The overall goal of our work is the creation of an inexpensive test-bed equipped with a real-time mediated control system to enhance the overall system autonomy and robustness. This test-bed enables us to study several concepts including: (i) mediation of human user control of complex robot systems; (ii) multi-user shared teleoperation; and (iii) robustness of the control in the presence of varying grades of communication — issues that are pertinent to a number of current and future generations of military/civilian systems.