Autonomous Off-Road Navigation for MuCAR-3 Improving the Tentacles Approach: Integral Structures for Sensing and Motion

This report gives an overview of the autonomous navigation approach developed for the ground robot MuCAR-3, partly as a satellite project in the CoTeSys cluster of excellence. Safe robot navigation in general demands that the navigation approach can also cope with situations where GPS data is noisy or even absent and hence great care must be taken when using global map information. Choosing a safe action should be tightly coupled to the perception of the immediate surrounding in such situations. The tentacles approach developed earlier in the project efficiently deals with these issues by introducing integral structures for sensing and motion. This report presents the extensions and improvements made to the tentacles approach during the progress of the project and the results obtained at various challenging robot competitions.