Autonomous control of an engine-driven mobile platform for field robotic systems

Currently, most of the robotic systems use electric actuators and depend on chemical batteries as source of energy. However, this results in severe limitations to their range and time of autonomous operation, making it difficult to employ those robotic systems in remote areas or fields. In order to solve this problem, the authors have developed a mobile platform with energy-generation capability and mechanisms to drive it automatically. In this paper, a new autonomous control for the mobile platform is proposed, including telemetry features, especially focused on hyper-tether [1] applications. Those applications may include landmine detection/removal and forestry works in environments where the currently available systems cannot operate uninterruptedly for longperiods of time.