A second generation micro-vehicle testbed for cooperative control and sensing strategies

This paper describes the second generation of an economical cooperative control testbed described in [C. H. Hsieh et al Proc. Am. Cont. Conf., 2006]. The original car-based vehicle is improved with on-board range sensing, limited on board computing, and wireless communication, while maintaining economic feasibility and scale. A second, tank-based platform, uses a flexible caterpillar-belt drive and the same modular sensing and communication components. We demonstrate practical use of the testbed for algorithm validation by implementing a recently proposed cooperative steering law involving obstacle avoidance.