Autonomous Robot Vehicle Controlled by Your Mind

Sensors on MadeInGermany Autonomous Car

MadeinGermany: AUTONOMOUS ROBOT Vehicle is a Robot that can now be controlled by your mind!
The robot car that the Free University of Berlin developed, is the prefecture of car technology for the autonomous vehicles of the future.

The preliminary work was done between 2006 and 2007 by the development of autonomous vehicle, "Spirit of Berlin", a converted Dodge Caravan, took the 2007 the autonomous robot race in California. The race took place in a closed barracks, a kind of urban environment, under controlled conditions.

MadeinGermany is a VW Passat with drive-by-wire technology. This means that the CAN-bus from the vehicle can be accessed directly from their computer. The CAN bus is the control center of modern vehicles. The engine, brakes, steering wheel etc. send sensor data via the CAN bus and can also access these commands lines obtained. A CAN-bus at the connected computer can speed up the engine, apply the brakes or turn the steering wheel.

MadeinGermany knows its position through the use of a GPS unit from the company Applanix. The GPS signal is received by an antenna and the navigation computer calculates the current vehicle position. An inertial (IMU), equipped with accelerometers and gyroscope, the position of the vehicle will interpolate if a brief occlusion of the satellites occurs - for example, if the vehicle in a tunnel drives or high-rise buildings obscure the satellite signal, the inertial precision further measure the movement of the vehicle and thus the position track of MadeinGermany on the map. So the vehicle from any point in the to every other city be ordered. The computer determines the optimum route in the city map and passes it to the control software.
MadeinGermany recognizes its environment by the use of the following sensors:
1) Six-LUX laser scanners from IBEO with four beams.
2) A rotating laser scanner with 64 jets from Velodyne.
3) seven radar units from Hella, TAW and FMS for the detection of vehicles behind or in front of their car.
4) Four video cameras, especially for images with large dynamic range. One of the video cameras detecting the lane markings, two mediate a stereoscopic (Depth) image of the environment. The fourth camera records the image from driver's perspective.
5) A thermal imaging camera detects pedestrians and animals.

Using of video cameras, they have succeeded navigating in traffic, recognizing the particular shape of the bodies. MadeinGermany calculates the correspondence of the images from two cameras is determined and the stereoscopic depth information of all objects on the road. Just as people with two eyes perceive the world in three dimensions, so does this vehicle. On 13 October at the presentation of MadeinGermany
they showed for the first time the detection of traffic lights on the road. Their goal is to recognize traffic lights in and from any position automatically on the road.