An Unmanned Autonomous Navigation System or an Autonomous Navigation Vehicle Designcan be used for surveillance and real-time situational awareness in areas where it might be inconvenient, hostile or impossible to have a human presence.

An Unmanned Autonomous Navigation System is empowered to  drive itself autonomously on a predefined course or controlled remotely. An Unmanned Autonomous Navigation System can run independent of a human operator.  Autonomous Navigation System depend on a set of sensors to observe and cognize the environment around it. An Autonomous Navigation System is operated using a drive-by-wire technology. The Autonomous Navigation System can be used for surveillance and real-time situational awareness in areas where it might be inconvenient, hostile or impossible to have a human presence. The commands on Autonomous Navigation System are generated by the vision and navigation algorithms in lieu of a human operator. This case study showcases Mistral’s expertise in designing, development and implementation of  an Unmanned Autonomous Navigation System (Autonomous Navigation Vehicle Design) fitted with multiple sensors like LIDAR, RADAR, Ultrasonic, and Ambient light to observe and cognize the environment around it.

The Customer

The customer is a leading Defense lab involved in the research of Information & Communication Technology and Development of Intelligent Systems such as an unmanned Autonomous Navigation System.

Building an Autonomous Navigation System

The customer was designing an Autonomous Navigation System and approached Mistral to develop the Autonomous Navigation Vehicle Design to be used for various security & surveillance operations. The requirements for the Autonomous Navigation System were:

• Rugged all-terrain Autonomous vehicle enabled with autonomous driving for perimeter surveillance
• Had to be able to provide 24×7 patrolling of vital installations with seamless Video Surveillance capability
• The Autonomous Navigation System has to act as the first response vehicle in a hostile environment
• Acts as a Lead convoy vehicle

Mistral was entrusted with the complete Design and development of the Autonomous Navigation Vehicle, including integration of various sensors, software, mechanical outfits and components ensuring high protection from shock and vibration, and providing ruggedization for all weather, all-terrain operation.

Autonomous Navigation System – Solution Provided

Mistral partnered with one of leading electric vehicle manufacturers to custom design and develop the Autonomous Navigation Vehicle to suit customer specific requirements. Mistral developed a state-of-the-art Autonomous vehicle based on the customized vehicle platform and integrated electric motor controller, brake, parking, steering actuators and sensors to enable drive-by-wire. The selected all-terrain Autonomous vehicle was fitted with multiple sensors like LIDAR, RADAR, Ultrasonic, and Ambient light to observe and cognize the environment around it.

The Autonomous Navigation System or Autonomous Navigation Vehicle is equipped with:

• GPS/INS sensor and RTK base-station for real-time positioning error correction
• Two wide angle cameras at the front and rear providing a 360 bird’s eye view
• Multiple cameras which assist in judgmental decision making and to act according to the situation and surroundings
• PTZ camera and thermal Camera for seamless day/night Video surveillance
• Powerful embedded computers with graphics processor that run compute intensive navigational and visual algorithms.

The battery-operated Autonomous Navigation System or the Autonomous Navigation Vehicle design included Installation and customization of an ROS (Robot Operating System) framework on ruggedized computational units along with

• Integrating the drive-by-wire actuators & sensors
• Integration of sensors module to ROS
• Integrating  the navigational and visual algorithms
• Development of the Web based GIS system for defining the route maps, roads and building
• Development of web based applications to remotely configure and tele-operate the vehicle

Read the detailed case study on Autonomous Navigation System to know more about the Tracking, Surveillance and Communication setup that are integral part of the custom designed Autonomous Navigation Vehicle Design from Mistral.