LASER SCANNER BASED FREE NAVIGATION OF AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

A fast and robust navigation system is presented to guide autonomous v ehicles in industrial surroundings. The position and orientation of th e vehicle are estimated by comparing laser scanner range data with an environment model composed of two-dimensional lines. The environment m odel is drawn up with the aid of a semi-automated editor. The computin g time of the presented algorithm is independent of the model size due to precompilation. This navigation system has been implemented on a t ransputer network. In addition, practical results are presented here.