Automated Tuning and Calibration of By-Wire Vehicles for Automated Driving Functions

Unmanned ground vehicles are becoming widely seen as a means of increasing safety and production for a variety of purposes. These vehicles are used in a diverse range of applications (e.g. military, mining, agriculture, automotive). Many control parameters scale nicely with the size and type of vehicle. However, performance requirements also vary based on accuracy and smoothness of control per customer needs. For this reason, the control system parameters used for these vehicles require specific tuning. Autonomous vehicles use a variety of sensors to estimate their position, orientation and speed. These sensors need to be calibrated for each vehicle. Calibration can be difficult, require extra equipment and sometimes more than one person, and one needs to be very familiar with the procedure to do it correctly. Therefore, it is important to reduce the time and skills required to tune the control system and calibrate the sensors. This Phase II proposal will continue to build on the ideas that were demonstrated during Phase I to improve the capabilities of automatic tuning and self-calibration algorithms for autonomous ground vehicles.