Student Group Seeking Guidance (Object Avoidance)

ArduRover ArduBoat
1

Hello, we are a small group of students tasked with designing an autonomous boat. The tasks we need to accomplish include:

  • Path routing
  • Navigation
  • Collision avoidance/object detection

As far as we can tell, the first two requirements can be met with relative ease using ArduRover. Our main concern is whether or not ArduRover is capable of collision avoidance akin to the collision avoidance outlined in the tutorial for ArduCopter:

http://ardupilot.org/dev/docs/code-overview-object-avoidance.html

We are also wondering which type of sensor would be most sensible to accomplish this task (ultrasonic/SONAR, LIDAR, 3D depth camera such as Intel RealSense, etc). The board we are using is the Pixhawk 2.4.8.

If anyone could point to specific resources that may help us accomplish this task, and recommend compatible hardware/sensors to mount on our boat, we would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks

2

Hi Nick,

The next version of Rover (4.0) will have improved object avoidance features (there are some videos on my youtube channel including this one)

Nobody has done object avoidance of dynamic obstacles with a boat so you may be the first!

My two favourite lidars are the lightware lw20 (single beam lidar) and the lightware SF40c (360 lidar) but there is a full list here. The Benewake lidars are also popular because they offer good performance for the price. I don’t recommend sonar in general because although their wide beam is theoretically better than a lidar’s single beam, I’ve found they are difficult to setup and keep working reliably.

3

Hello, thank you in advance for the helps.

I am just accomplish my autonomous boat project. But, I have a big doubt about the setup of the echosounder and Lidar (for object avoidance). About the sonnar I have the echologger ECT400 that can be integrate to pixhawk by a serial port. As you realize, it use parameter value:

RNGFND1_TYPE = 17 (NMEA)

However, in the case of the lidar setup (LightWare SF10C) it demand use a serial port, too (for long cable) use same parameter with the value:

RNGFND1_TYPE = 8 (LightWareSerial)

I know that is possible define more than one lidar sensor by RNGFNDn_TYPE parameter. But, I don’t know how “Object Avoidance with Bendy Ruler” algorithm get the distance data. Moreover, what value will be show as “Sonarrange” in the in the Mission Planner’s Flight Data screen’s Status tab.

Thank