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Design and implementation of an unmanned ground vehicle for security

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 Proceeding of the 7th International Symposium on Mechatronics and its Applications (ISMA10), Sharjah, UAE, April 20-22, 2010

Design and Implementation of an Unmanned Ground Vehicle

for Security Applications

Abdelhafid Bouhraoua1, Necar Merah2, Mansour AlDajani3, and Mostafa ElShafei2

1
Computer Engineering Department,
2
Mechanical Engineering Department,
3
Systems Engineering Department,
King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals
P.O. Box 969, 31261 Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
{abouh, nesar, dajani, elshafei}@kfupm.edu.sa

ABSTRACT issues can be grouped in the following aspects: communication

aspect, control aspect, obstacle avoidance aspect, base station
This paper describes the design and implementation of a issues and vision systems development. Reliability and system
prototype teleoperated unmanned guided vehicle (UGV) for robustness issues are also interesting aspects to consider.
security applications. A commercial Quad motorbike with a 1- Although, some of the works relate to the autonomous branch of
cylinder gasoline engine with a power of about 5 HP was re- the UGVs (or UAVs), its nature applies perfectly to remotely
engineered and transformed into a fully automated vehicle that controlled UGVs.
can be teleoperated. The designed UGV is remotely controlled
using high speed secure wireless connection. The vehicle is Research and development of UGV is often focused on
provided with video cameras and controlled pan and tilt motion. specific applications and are therefore designed accordingly. The
The live video is transmitted to an operator in the command and ability to be customized or reconfigured and function in an
control station who controls steering acceleration, braking, as well unstructured, outdoor environment is a desired feature of robotic
as gun positioning and firing using a joystick, a steering wheel and platforms. Among the recently proposed specialized applications
pedals. The command and control computer translates and sends are the military vehicles for tactical reconnaissance and explosive
the operator commands to an on-board computer which in turn disposal missions. The US Department of Defense is planning to
activates a number of actuators and servo motors for full control replace a third of its armed vehicles and weaponry with robots by
of the vehicle. The developed UGV demonstrated clearly the 2015 [2]. Such systems are expected to minimize the operations
potential application of this vehicle, and incorporated the cost and combat casualty.
necessary technology for local manufacturing of these types of In reference [1], a survey of military use of UGVs has been
vehicles for security applications, or for building less demanding presented. Several UGVs have made it to the field, like the
UGV for civilian applications. PackBot [12] and the Talon family [13] which offer a large
portfolio of different range and applications UGVs. Some of them
1. INTRODUCTION like the Talon Sword has been deployed in Iraq. The Ripsaw [14]
constitutes a typical remotely controlled UGV. It is fast reliable
Unmanned mobile robots are actively being developed for and can carry soldiers and safely help them withdraw from combat
both civilian and military use to perform dull, dirty, and dangerous zones.
activities. They proved to be effective in a large number of The present paper describes the design, construction, testing
circumstances where the use of human labor is too expensive, the and implementation of a UGV for security applications using the
task is risky, or it is impractical for human capability. latest wireless computer communications and carefully designed
There are two general classes of unmanned mobile vehicles: mechanical and electronic systems for effective control and
Teleoperated, like the one described in the present work, and maneuvering. The system is supplied with two pan/tilt cameras,
Autonomous. A teleoperated, or unmanned guided vehicle rifle/gun control, steering/speed/brake management, and many
(UGV), is a vehicle that is controlled by a human operator at a fail-safe features. The prototype was thoroughly and critically
remote location via a communications link. evaluated, and suggestions for the next generation design are
discussed.
Fully autonomous UGVs have seen extensive development
2. BACKGROUND
driven by the DARPA Grand Challenge competition [5,11].
Although some of these solutions are at a very advanced stage,
2.1. Requirements
they are still undergoing tests and their deployment is yet to be
The teleoperated UGV is composed of:
seen. On the contrary, remotely controlled UGVs have already
made it to the deployment phase. This type of vehicles is also • A Quad motorbike used as the vehicle. The Quad is a
seeing a proliferation of developed solutions especially in the commercial grade vehicle.
lightweight to medium weight sizes [1]. Many issues related to • The base station which consists of a PC with a wireless
this category have been addressed in the literature [1-10]. These connection running the application that allows the
operator to remotely control the vehicle. The base

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 Proceeding of the 7th International Symposium on Mechatronics and its Applications (ISMA10), Sharjah, UAE, April 20-22, 2010

station receives video streams from the different on non-permanent joints to allow easy assembly and disassembly of
board cameras. the base. The front end corners of the sheet are chamfered to allow
maximum travel of modified steering system and the side edges of
To provide means to control the quad vehicle remotely the the plate were rounded for safety.
following requirements need to be fulfilled:
1. Efficient control of the means used to drive the vehicle
(Ignition, Steering, Acceleration, Brakes and trigger)
2. The operator will need:
• Relayed video to be able to see where the vehicle is and
to drive it adequately
• To transmit the driving control orders from the remote
operator to the control system
3. The sniper will need:
• Relaying video to see where the gun is pointing and act
accordingly
• Providing a means to control the gun trigger to allow the
sniper to remotely start shooting Figure 1: A 3-D representation of platform with
• The gun must be mounted on an omni directional mounted poles.
platform to allow for added freedom of action when the
vehicle is moving. The rear and front cameras are mounted on commercial pan
and tilt systems that allow a rotation of 360° and 180° for the tilt.
The rear pan and tilt system is secured on an antenna-type pole
3. DESIGN AND MANUFACTURING OF MECHANICAL with manually adjustable heights. The lower part of the pole was
SYSTEMS machined from a 40x40x2 square tube of aluminum for light
The first steps of the design consisted on evaluating the weight. The height is adjusted to allow full view of front and side
existing Quad by analyzing the different functions to be obstacles. The rear pole assembly is designed to allow for a
automated and measuring the available space for mounting the maximum height of 2.0 m above ground and the front camera will
required motors and drives. Several design configurations were be mounted at an approximate height of 1.5 m.
developed and evaluated. This lead to the selection of an optimal
configuration that was implemented with the following criteria:
3.2. Gun support and trigger system
1. The modifications to the quad should be minimal so that it
can be easily brought back to its initial state. The front pole is designed to support both the camera and
2. Modular system design should be adopted for ease of gun support and triggering system. The camera is mounted on top
maintenance. of the gun, which in turn is supported by the front pan and tilt
3. Simple part configuration designs should be made so that system. The fixture that holds the gun along with the triggering
they can be manufactured locally and at low cost. system is illustrated in Figure 2.
4. Materials available locally should be used.
5. Automated control of only the rear brake, given that the
The triggering device is constituted of a servo motor (1), an
quad is not expected to travel at high speed.
aluminum wheel (2) mounted on the motor shaft and triggering
6. Automated control of acceleration
finger (3) which passes through the specially designed groove on
7. Automated control of steering.
the left side gun mount stand (4). The trigger is mounted on the
8. Use of two cameras; one at the back of the vehicle and one
wheel by two M4 screws. Actuating the servo motor will trigger
at the front
the shot through the quick action of the finger. The mechanical
9. The cameras will be mounted on commercial pan and tilt
finger returns to its initial position after the action. The butt of the
10. The gun will be mounted at the front and provided with an
gun is held in place by a fixture composed of vertical plate (5)
automated triggering system.
bolted to the base, two side brackets (6) and one back clip (7) that
11. 12-V-55A batteries will be used to supply all of the required
holds the side brackets. The fixture helps hold the gun butt in the
power.
desired position and serves as a shoulder reacting to thrust force
12. A sturdy and stable platform is to be designed to support the from gunshot. The front camera is mounted on plate (8).
cameras, the gun and ammunition and the computer.
3.3. Accelerator and Brake Actuating Systems
3.1. Platform and Supports
In order to adhere to the above criteria, the mechanical The accelerator and brake will be driven by two identical
design begun with measurements of available space dimensions commercial servo motors supplied by a 12 volt DC battery and
and estimation of required torque for steering, and force for brake mounted on the quad’s handgrips using specially designed
and accelerator actuation. This lead to the establishment of the fixtures. A3-D representation of the brake drive is illustrated in
platform (base) configuration. A 2-mm thick steel sheet was Fig. 3. High-torque model motors (1) with a maximum capacity of
selected to be used as base to support the computer and electronic 380 kg-cm were selected based on required torque and available
equipment as well as the poles and pan and tilt systems for space. The motors which are controlled by pulses generated by the
cameras and gun and ammunition system. Figure 1 is a 3-D view slave microcontroller are mounted on handgrip by a specially
of the designed base plate and poles. This plate is mounted using designed fixture (2). Both the accelerator and brake are actuated

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 Proceeding of the 7th International Symposium on Mechatronics and its Applications (ISMA10), Sharjah, UAE, April 20-22, 2010

by the servo motor through the actuating wheel (3) and a flexible Where C is the center distance between the driving and
steel wire (4). The complete brake and accelerator driving systems driven pulleys, d and D are respectively the pitch diameters of
were manufactured, assembled and successfully tested. The actual small and large toothed pulleys and θd and θD are respectively the
brake and acceleration systems are illustrated on the photographs wrap angles on the small and large pulleys calculated from Eq. 2.
of figures 4 and 5, respectively. It can be seen that the original
quad design was not altered and that designed automatic brake and ⎛
D − d ⎞⎟ (2)
accelerator actuation systems can be easily assembled and θ = π − 2 sin
d
−1 ⎜
⎜ ⎟
⎜
⎝ 2C ⎟⎠
disassembled using the specially designed mounting fixtures. ⎛ D − d ⎞⎟
θ = π + 2 sin
D
−1 ⎜
⎜ ⎟
⎜
⎝ 2C ⎟⎠

6
4

7
2

1
3

Figure 4: Accelerator actuation system

Figure 2: gun holder and triggering device.
4
5 3
2

Figure 3: 3-D Representation of the Braking system Figure 5: Brake actuation system

3.4. Steering System The choice of the XL timing belt is based on flexibility of
assembly and the criterion of back drivability. Moreover, this type
A thorough analysis of the Quad front structure led to the of belt does not stretch nor slip resulting in the transmission of
selection of the lower front part for designing and installing the power with a constant angular velocity. Timing belts are also
automatic steering system. The design took into account criteria 1 known to have efficiencies varying from 97 to 99%.
and 2 defined above. Steering will be performed through a high
torque motor with gear-timing belt drive system. The motor and The 24-teeth driving XL-gearbelt pulley, which was selected
drive elements were selected to provide easily controllable and from a commercial catalog, was bored and mounted on the motor
precise steering. A commercially available high torque stepper shaft using two setscrews. The large pulley (72-teeth) is used to
motor was selected in order to get precise desired positions. drive the steering shaft through a specially designed spindle. The
Specific gears and timing belts were selected based on the spindle is mounted by press-fit inside the original hollow steering
required gear ratio (torque) and strength. The photograph of figure shaft at one end and in the driven pulley at the other end. Square
6 shows the actual drive. keys are used to provide extra constraint from relative rotation
between spindle and driving pulley and a pin is utilized between
steering shaft and spindle. The lower end of the spindle is
The selection of a 24-teeth driving XL-gearbelt pulley and threaded and a nut is used to constrain the pulleys’ axial motion as
72-teeth driven XL-gearbelt pulley allowed a gear ratio of 3 and shown on figure 6.
an amplification of the torque by the same factor. Power
transmission is ensured by an extra light (XL) rubberized fabric
timing belt with a standard pitch of 5 mm. The required pitch Two adjustable position brackets were designed for
length of the belt was estimated by Eq. 1 to be 500 mm: mounting the motor such that the whole system will result
1/ 2 (1) in minimum reduction of empty space between quad and
L = ⎢4C 2 − (D − d )2 ⎥ + 1 ⎛⎜ Dθ + dθ
⎡ ⎤ ⎞
⎟ ground. Since the axis of original steering shaft is tilted by
⎣ ⎦ 2⎝ D d ⎠
approximately 15° with respect to the vertical the motor

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 Proceeding of the 7th International Symposium on Mechatronics and its Applications (ISMA10), Sharjah, UAE, April 20-22, 2010

mounting brackets were designed to compensate for the

tilt and provide good alignment between the driving and
driven gearbelt pulleys. A special cover plate was
designed to protect the whole system from any external
impacts. The complete system was assembled and
successfully tested.

Figure 7: Block Diagram showing the base station on

the left and the UGV on the right

4.1. The Server PC

Figure 6: Photograph showing the timing belt drive The server PC is disassembled and then fixed on the
system. platform as shown in figure 8. It is connected to the wireless
router through the Ethernet port and to one of the two PIC
microcontroller through the serial COM1 port.
4. CONTROL SYSTEMS DESIGN
The server/client software is written in Visual Basic. The
server software runs at start-up in the server PC. The client
The UGV project is divided into two main systems (Figure
software connects to the server and starts sending commands to
7). The first system can be called the controlled vehicle and the
control the vehicle. The server software forwards these commands
second system is the base station.
to the PIC microcontroller that executes these commands.
The main components of the controlled vehicle are:
Video is relayed to the client PC using a streaming software
• The four-wheel motorbike modified to support the
installed on the server PC. A simple browser is used to display the
necessary mechanical components to be electrically
relayed video on the client side.
controlled.
• A PC working as a server which constitutes the center of
the control and communication with the base station is 4.2. The Control Unit
mounted on the platform The control unit in is in charge of decoding and executing
• A WiFi wireless router used as the communication channel the user commands. It translates into sending the suitable signals
to communicate with the base station to the various actuators of USAD-1. The control unit is also
• A Microcontroller board, used to relay the commands responsible for monitoring the integrity of the system and is in
received from the base station, via the PC server to the charge of taking the appropriate actions when the connection with
drivers of the actuators. the base station is lost.
The control unit, figure 9, is composed of :
4.1. Power Requirements • The microcontrollers boards,
• The stepper motor driver and the stepper motor terminal
The vehicle has only a 12V battery used for ignition and to connectors,
power some other vehicle features like lighting. Commercial
• RS232-RS422 converter,
Lead-acid batteries are used as budget constraints forbade us from
• DC to DC adaptor,
seeking more reliable and power efficient batteries. The Server
PC, is powered from a power-inverter that inverts the 12-V DC • Relays board and electrical connectors.
power supplied by the battery into a 110V AC power to which the
PC power supply is connected. The Microcontroller and the router Two PIC microcontroller boards, connected in a
are both directly connected to the 12-V battery through some master/slave mode are used. The master PIC, connected to the
regulator or DC-to-DC voltage converters. The power supply of server PC, is responsible for decoding the received commands and
the actuators (servos and stepper motors) is taken from the relaying them to the actuators. Commands related to the steering
additional batteries. or servos are forwarded to the slave microcontroller while on/off
types of actuations, using the relay board, are processed by the
master PIC. The used relay board contains 16 relays. Each relay
is controlled by a single digital signal. The master PIC
microcontroller's parallel ports B and D are used to drive the
relays. The two pan-and- tilt modules are connected to 4 relays

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 Proceeding of the 7th International Symposium on Mechatronics and its Applications (ISMA10), Sharjah, UAE, April 20-22, 2010

each. The other relays are used to control various features like the
ignition, the reverse drive and the lights. The steering stepper
motor is controlled by the IMS 1007IE stepper motor driver.
which is connected to the slave microcontroller through an RS-
232-to-RS-422 signal converter.

Figure 10: Videos from the UGV cameras as they

appear in the client PC

6. PRELIMINARY TESTS

Figure 8: The Server PC Extensive testing is required to demonstrate the viability of

the developed prototype (Figure 11). However, this project aims at
proving the technology transfer process and demonstrate local
capabilities rather that producing a working product. Therefore,
testing has been restricted to the functional aspect only.
Performance testing has been excluded because of the limited
budget and duration of the project at its current stage.

Figure 9: The Control Unit

5. COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

A regular IEEE 802.11n wireless LAN connection is used.

However, this type of communication medium is not robust. A
proprietary communication method that uses frequencies in the
military reserved band will be more appropriate. The wireless
LAN adoption is motivated by the sole purpose of fast
Figure 11: The UGV prototype (rear Camera not
prototyping.
shown)
The client PC is a normal desktop PC that is connected to a
USB Wireless 802.11n NIC (Network Interface Card),. The client
control software requires the user to specify the static IP address Two test phases have been performed. While building the
of the server PC. UGV, many modular and functional tests were conducted. Each
module in the vehicle was tested separately. The breaking and
Video can be viewed in the client PC monitor through a
acceleration modules, the communications module, the steering
regular web browser as shown in Figure 10.
module, the visual system and other are all tested in the lab. These
modules are then tuned and modified according to the
observations. After the vehicle was fully functional in the lab, a
field test was arranged in the main Stadium of KFUPM. The
vehicle was transported to the test site and the tests were
performed. The goal of the field tests is purely functional as
mentioned earlier. The evaluation test results can be summerized
as follows:
• The range of communication is found to be around 250
meters. The reliability of the communication has been tested

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 Proceeding of the 7th International Symposium on Mechatronics and its Applications (ISMA10), Sharjah, UAE, April 20-22, 2010

under clear weather conditions and free space. Few packets 9. REFERENCES
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8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS [12] http://www.howeandhowe.com/
[13] http://www.foster-miller.com/lemming.htm
This work was supported by King Fahd University of Petroleum [14] http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=325
and Minerals (KFUPM) through grant # CCCR0000. The authors
would like to thank the senior design students M. A. Al-Marouf
and A. T. Fars and the lab engineer K. Sattar for their valuable
contributions to the project.

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