Eli Kwitman: OVERBOT

Chris Woodruff and Eli Kiwtman worked under the direction of Gabriel Elkaim on rehabilitating and improving an autonomous vehicle called the Overbot. This vehicle was recently donated to UCSC after it had been developed for two years in an attempt to race in the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004 and in 2005. Although this vehicle was disqualified both years, it is a very robust autonomous ground vehicle. In the hands of the Autonomous Systems Lab at UCSC, the Overbot is now a testbed for researching various configurations of hardware and control algorithms to maximize performance in autonomous driving.

Chris began his work by learing how to get the Overbot running in a fully autonomous mode. Once the vehicle was running, the team tested the Overbot's ability to drive simple courses like a straight line and a circle. In the process of testing the vehicle, the team discovered problems with the Inertial Navigation System installed. The heading information provided by the INS lagged behind real time, feeding the Overbot incorrect information. To correct this problem, the team compared new INS systems with the existing system and also implemented a GPS defined heading correction in software. The testing and development of the Overbot during this program yielded the vehicle more capable as a research platform for autonomous driving.