Design and Implementation of an Autonomous Electric Vehicle for Self-Driving Control under GNSS-Denied Environments

Abstract

In this study, the hardware and software design and implementation of an autonomous electric vehicle are addressed. We aimed to develop an autonomous electric vehicle for path tracking. Control and navigation algorithms are developed and implemented. The vehicle is able to perform path-tracking maneuvers under environments in which the positioning signals from the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) are not accessible. The proposed control approach uses a modified constrained input-output nonlinear model predictive controller (NMPC) for path-tracking control. The proposed localization algorithm used in this study guarantees almost accurate position estimation under GNSS-denied environments. We discuss the procedure for designing the vehicle hardware, electronic drivers, communication architecture, localization algorithm, and controller architecture. The system’s full state is estimated by fusing visual inertial odometry (VIO) measurements with wheel odometry data using an extended Kalman filter (EKF). Simulation and real-time experiments are performed. The obtained results demonstrate that our designed autonomous vehicle is capable of performing path-tracking maneuvers without using Global Navigation Satellite System positioning data. The designed vehicle can perform challenging path-tracking maneuvers with a speed of up to 1 m per second.