Journal of Navigation

Table of Contents - July 2012 - Volume 65, Issue 03  

Research Article

A System for Tracking an Autonomously Controlled Canine

Jeff Millera1 c1, George Flowersa1 and David Bevlya1

a1 (Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA)

Abstract

This paper presents an approach for outdoor navigation of an autonomously guided canine using an embedded command module with vibration and tone generation capabilities and an embedded control suite comprised of a microprocessor, wireless radio, GPS receiver, and an Attitude and Heading Reference System. In order to determine the canine's motions, which inherently contain non-conventional noise characteristics, the sensor measurements were integrated using a specialized Extended Kalman Filter (EKF), equipped with a Fuzzy Logic controller for adaptive tuning of the Process Noise Covariance Matrix. This allowed for rejection of un-modelled canine motion characteristics which tend to corrupt accelerometer bias tracking in a standard EKF. The EKF solution provided an optimized estimate of the canine position and velocity and also proved to be effective in tracking the canine's position (within 7·5 m) and velocity (within 1·2 m/s) during simulated 10 second GPS outages.

(Online publication March 30 2012)

KEY WORDS

  • Canine;
  • Fuzzy Logic;
  • Extended Kalman Filter

Correspondence:

c1 (E-mail: millejd@tigermail.auburn.edu)