On the development of a low-cost device for retrofitting tracked vehicles for autonomous navigation

In this paper, we propose a low-cost control system for transforming tracked vehicles or off-road machines in autonomous vehicles. The control system is composed of a microcontroller and an electro-hydraulic actuator. This devices were designed and developed ad hoc at the laboratory of mechanical engineering of the University of Salerno. The first part of the study concerns the creation of a multibody model for investigating the behaviour of tracked vehicles and the development of a control system. The second part of the investigation focuses on the retrofitting of a tracked dumper by installing a suitable actuator and the on-board controller. For this application, we decided to use the European global navigation satellite system called Galileo that ensures real-time positioning accuracy down to the metre. The dumper has been also equipped with ultrasonic and infra-red sensors for obstacles detection, a 9 DOF inertial measurement unit, and a GNSS receiver for Galileo global navigation satellite system.