Experimental Evaluation of Perception and Actuation Architectures for the Articulated Vehicle Automatic Control

Abstract

9 páginas, 8 figuras.-- Trabajo presentado a la Conference on Automation: "Innovations and future prospectives" celebrada en Polonia del 24 al 26 de Marzo de 2010.Bus Rapid Transit systems as well as Intelligent Transport Systems are being subject of research since many years. Nowadays with highly developed instrumentation, sensing and actuation technologies it is possible to foresee an important advance in the field of autonomous and or semi-autonomous transportation systems. Among the most promising transport infrastructures the articulated bus is an interesting, low cost and friendly option. In this paper an experimental platform for research on automatic control of articulated bus is presented. Platform consists in a mobile platform (the bus) fully instrumented and in a ground test area composed of asphalt roads inside CSIC premises. Paper presents also the development of a HMI to ease progress in control system evaluation.The authors acknowledge partial funding of this research under: Robocity2030 S- 0505/DPI-0176, and IMADE PIE/62/2008 (Comunidad de Madrid, ALDESA CONSTRUCCIONES SA, MAXIMASDE); FORTUNA D/019806/08 (Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional para el Desarrollo, AECID). Dr. Héctor Montes acknowledges support form Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá and from CSIC under grant JAE-Doc.Peer reviewe