Semi Autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicle

Project Title

Semi Autonomous Unmanned Ground Vehicle

Project Area of Specialization RoboticsProject Summary

Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV), as the name itself, proposes an automobile that works as in contact with the land and not carrying any human, is very valuable in numerous applications where it is not convenient, unsafe or impossible for a human operator. These mechanized vehicles work especially in military operations such as detecting bombs, border patrol, and reconnaissance. This UGV has sensors that measure parameters representing the actual location of the robot and it also feedbacks the live video of the surrounding environment.

As we know our country is facing internal and external terrorism. In current years the military has embraced many joint operations that comprise Operation Rah-e-Nijaat , Sher-e-Dil, Al-Mizan, Rah-e-Haq,  Sirat-e-Mustaqeem, Zalzala, Rah-e-Raast, Koh-e-Sufaid[1].

Now Pakistan has started a new operation named operation Rad-ul-Fasad on 22 February 2017 and also in this operation our army is sacrificing their lives for their nation. These are only the recent operations our army has fought for. We are losing our soldiers in such operations. There is no doubt that our army kills militants in great figures but it means a lot when we lose our soldiers. To save the lives of our soldiers this product will play a great role. This product will save the lives of our soldiers in operation and in wars. This product can help to patrol the border areas and it will have a gun which can autonomously destruct its target or either commanded by controller. It can also be used to unload the weight of soldier’s ammo, communication system and from other necessary things.

Therefore it has to modes:

1. Remote control Mode

2. Autonomous Mode.

 1.Remote control Mode

In remote control mode, UGV is a vehicle that is constrained by a human operator at a remote area by a communication link. All the processes are provided by the operator based upon sensory feedback from the viewable pathway visual perception.

 2.Autonomous mode

In Autonomous mode UGV will act as an independent robot however this is explicitly a vehicle that works on the ground and It can perform the following tasks.

• Work for an extensive duration with no human mediation.
• Move from indicated position A to position B, exclusive of human route help.
• Identify objects of intrigue, for example, individual and vehicles.

Now a day, this product is highly in use by most of the advanced countries in their surveillance and military field as well. This product has huge scope in developing countries as it is used to augment the soldier’s capability with this robot we can patrol the border for extended durations without human intervention and without the cost of human life. In the current situation of the world where terrorism is at its peak, this kind of technological help could be very handy to overcome the chaos. To prove this concept a prototype has been developed with all the capabilities on a small scale.

Project Objectives

The key perspective of this development is to design and build a UGV which could be used for military warfare rescue and surveillance operation.UGV is a Ground vehicle that carries no human or passengers. UGVs — sometimes called “Rovers” — can be fully or partially autonomous but are more often controlled remotely by a human.

Primary Objectives

• To design a smart Ground robot that can provide surveillance and can target its enemy.
• To patrol Border.
• To carry out a survey to the terrorist areas to gain and collect information without any human loss.

To minimize the risk of a soldier’s life, advanced countries are using such type of UGVs for surveillance and destruction of the enemy as well. These UGVs can be used anywhere with enhanced capabilities as an additional feature but we are designing it for military uses.

Project Implementation Method

The figure below showing the number of steps how this project is carried out starting from collecting requirements and needs, what operations this UGV can perform. What will be the design of UGV, what are the approaches to build or implement this project and then testing stage in which our final hardware is integrated with software to check its movement and accuracy. At the last maintenance stage in which we will remove the flaws.

                                                      

Above model is standard procedure of engineering system design applications. Our system is based on this model we will follow this model until desired results were obtained.

1.The mechanical structure of UGV

The lower structure of UGV is made of steel cover with steel sheet and upper body part of UGV is made of wood. Rear two wheels are attached with wiper motor for forward and backward motion, and front wheels are attached with servo motor for left and right motion. In the upper part, there is two servos attached with wood for pan and tilt motion. IP camera and the gun is attached on the upper plane of wood.

 2.Implementation of the control circuit

The control system is placed in the mechanical structure of UGV.APM flight controller that controls lower structure of UGV.APM is programmed to get desired inputs and generate corresponding outputs. Other electronic modules (GPS/Compass, RC receiver, telemetry radio, motor driver and ultrasonic sensor) are attached to APM for the desired output. RC transmitter transmits a signal that is received by RC receiver which is attached with APM to control UGV manually. Arduino mega read PWM pulse of APM output to drive wiper motor through the motor driver. In the upper part of UGV, there are two servo motors for pan and tilt motion which is controlled by Arduino. IP camera transmits video to the control station (i.e. laptop) through a router.

 3.APM wiring and setup

We programmed it to use regular RC transmitters with both throttle and steering. We are using mode 2 in transmitter because the rover will typically go forward and backward and so the throttle should be spring-loaded to return to the mid-point.in mode 1 throttle is not spring loaded so we don’t use that.

4.RC setup

 APM output channel connects with servo and DC motor channel 1 with servo motor and channel 3 with DC motor

Car	APM outputs
Servo	1
Motor	3

To connect the Receiver with APM we use the three colored wires black is ground, red is live 5V and white is PWM signal. To connect both receiver and APM we use receiver channel 1 output pins to connect with APM 1st  input pins for the rover steering.channel 2 is connected with APM 3rd input for throttle, channel 5 is used for MODE selection(Manual, Auto, Rtl) and channel 6 to save the waypoints.

Function	Receiver output pins	APM inputs
Steering	1	1
Throttle	2	3
Mode	5	8
Record waypoint	6	7

5.GPS/Compass connection setup

6.Telemetry setup connection

An FPV telemetry radio is used to establish a connection between APM controller and ground station(PC or mobile) at distance up to 1000 meter.

Car

Servo

  Motor

Function

Steering

Throttle

Mode

Record waypoint

Benefits of the Project

These kind of Unmanned ground vehicles(UGV) are becoming more and more important in human environments, particularly in military applications, for example, military surveillance, transportation, and soldier salvage.

This UGV brings tremendous benefits to our soldiers and to civilians.

• We mounted the Ip-camera on its top to have the visualization of the environment and a gun to shot the enemy. UGV will augment the soldier capabilities to destroy the enemies. we can use it for an extensive duration to patrol the border areas and it has two modes autonomous mode, in which it needs no human assistance it can shoot the enemy itself and in manual mode, it can be done by the user.
• This Technology will enable us to create a variety of unmanned military vehicles that can benefit our military. 
• This UGV despite purpose or physical capabilities will bring tremendous advantages to our military and the societies where these vehicles are being used.
• This UGV will benefit the military with the ability to send these robots ahead of platoons to examine terrain they are about to enter. 
• The technology embedded into these vehicles that allow the soldier to spot the enemies that might be waiting to ambush the platoon. 
• This alone can help save lives. Although these UGVs can help spot out enemies on patrol or waiting to ambush our soldiers(it can be used to retain the death loss of soldier in different operations e.g Zarb-e-Azb).
• It will also provide cover into active combats.
• It can be used to destroy the light armor vehicle of enemies by doing minimal changes in it.
• For a soldier, ammunition is very important in the active war zone and it is very difficult for him to carry a substantial amount of it, in this scenario UGV can be very handy for them to carry the ammunition load. This UGV can be used to unload the burden of communication equipment from soldiers shoulder and give them more space to carry their ammunition.

In addition, It can be used for security purpose in different organizations and institutes by doing minimal changes in it. Likewise, This UGV waypoint followed technology can be used in agriculture field by making tracker autonomous for the cutting of wheat or other crops, and also by changing the lethal gun with a pesticide spray gun, we can spay antibiotics on crops. It also has the failsafe if due to any circumstances UGV goes out of control while maneuvering the mission or not we trigger (Return To Launch)RTL button which interrupts UGV to return to its home position without any human assistance or it can be done manually.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

This is the final view of our project.

It has two modes.

• Remotely controlled Mode
• Autonomous Mode

In Remotely controlled Mode we have UGVs GPS location direction and vision of the environment through IP camera on the control station. By the help of a transmitter, we can control its forward-backward movement with the right side of the transmitter stick and with the help of left side stick we can control it guns X-Y movement and we use switch D to trigger the gun.

In autonomous mode, we can give a certain number of waypoints to UGV e.g we select waypoints of the border on the control station and send those coordinates to UGV using telemetry module it starts maneuvering the border without having human assistance.

1.Activity diagram of lower chassis

Another feature in autonomous mode is the target detection and tracking on its own e.g first we select the target as the live video is feedback to control station where it performs an image processing on the video and start finding the target in it. if the target is detected it sends the coordinate of the target in the image to UGV where it performs mathematical computation and moves its Pan Tilt actuator in the direction of the target and after a certain time delay, it shots the enemy.

2.Activity diagram of upper body

3.Computer vision technology

We use computer vision technology to detect the upper body of the target. At the start we click on detection button to detect target features using haris_feature detection function figure1-2.  

Figure 1-1

Then we apply point tracker on it and also at the right bottom of the video player you can see the frame number is shown in figure 1-2 which shows its a frame 1 after that we create a bounding box around it to find its X-Y pixel value and length width of the target

Figure 1-2

Figure 1-3

We initialize the Kalman filter to track the target when the target is detected it label it corrected shown in figure 1-3 however if any obstacle comes in front of the target its start predicting its target movement and predicted label shows in the video player figure 1-4

Figure 1-4

and when the target is again detected it starts tracking the target and put the label of corrected shown in figure 1-5.

Figure 1-5

When the target is detected we send its XY coordinates to Arduino using Bluetooth data link where Arduino receive these coordinates and force the servos to move on that specific coordinates.

Final Deliverable of the Project HW/SW integrated systemType of Industry Security , Telecommunication Technologies Artificial Intelligence(AI), Internet of Things (IoT), RoboticsSustainable Development Goals Affordable and Clean Energy, Industry, Innovation and InfrastructureRequired Resources

Function	Receiver output pins	APM inputs
Steering	1	1
Throttle	2	3
Mode	5	8
Record waypoint	6	7