Development of a path follower in real-time environment

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the path-planning problem of an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) in a predefined, structured environment. Design/methodology/approach In this investigation, the environment chosen was the roadmap of the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, obtained from Google maps as reference. An UGV is developed and programmed so as to move autonomously from an indicated source location to the defined destination in the given map following the most optimal path. Findings An algorithm based on linear search is implemented to the autonomous robot to generate shortest paths in the environment. The developed algorithm is verified with the simulations as well as in experimental environments. Originality/value Unlike the past methodologies, the current investigation deals with the global path-planning strategy as the line following mechanism. Moreover, the proposed technique has been implemented in a real-time environment.