Abstract
Autonomous NavigaTor or ANT as the name suggests is a self driven vehicle. It is designed to move from one location to other guided by variety of sensors. These include GPS, Sonar and Compass sensors. The short term objective of this project is to move from one place to another crossing waypoints but later on as its range and accuracy is increased it can be used to guide people from one place to another or on larger scale it can be used in creating driverless cars.
Sensors
GPS
GPS Sensor will provide ANT its current position relative from which it can navigate to its destination. The GPS sensor used is EM-406A by GLOBALSAT.
Sonar
Sonar Sensor will be used by ANT to navigate between objects. 3 sonars mounted on front, right and left of ANT will provide the location of obstacles so that ANT can go between them without hitting them. The sonar sensor being used is LV-MaxSonar-EZ0 by MAXBOTIX.
Compass
Compass will be used to determine orientation of ANT with respect to its destination. The compass sensor used is HM55B compass module by HITACHI.
Motor Encoder
Motor Encoder will be used to determine the speed and distance traveled by ANT. To reduce the cost I am building my own motor encoder using IR sensors and disk marked with white and black stripes.