ABSTRACT

The Center for Self-Organizing Intelligent Systems at Utah State University developed the Advanced Rover Chassis 3, an autonomous vehicle with six intelligent wheels. Each wheel contains individual drive, steering, and computer systems. The six wheels are identical units. The suspension system is a passive linkage mechanism designed to distribute the weight of the vehicle body evenly among the six wheels. The suspension system was designed to keep the vehicle body positioned correctly with minimum deviation as bumps and surface irregularities are encountered. A control system was designed to operate the vehicle autonomously. The control tasks were distributed between the six in-wheel processors and one master processor. Two methods of distributing control tasks were designed, tested, and evaluated.  The ARC 3 design is complete. Two vehicles were manufactured, and have served admirably as platforms for the development of sensor and iv navigation systems. The two control systems evaluated both function well. The originally implemented control system performed better in dead-reckoning testing, but the superiority of either control system for a specific environment cannot be determined without further testing.

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