Team CIMAR's NaviGator: An unmanned ground vehicle for the 2005 DARPA grand challenge

This paper describes the development of an autonomous vehicle system that participated in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge event. After a brief description of the event, the architecture, based on version 3.2 of the Department of Defense Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems, and the design of the system are presented in detail. In particular, the “smart sensor” concept is introduced which provided a standardized means for each sensor to present data for rapid integration and arbitration. Information about the vehicle design, system localization, perception sensors, and the dynamic planning algorithms that were used is then presented in detail. Subsequently, testing results and performance results are presented. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.