Low cost navigation technology investigation for the unmanned ground vehicle program

The U.S. Army Missile Command (MICOM) is currently developing an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) Technology Test Bed (TTB). The UGV TTB is a program that will utilize two High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles (HMMWV). One HMMWV will contain the Operator Control Unit (OCU) while the other HMMWV will be operated as the remote vehicle. The purpose of the TTB is to develop a state-of-the-art low cost UGV that will be used for vehicle and target location. Design goals will be minimized in order to meet the low cost objective. The design goals for the land navigation system are attitude and heading accuracy within 1 deg (1σ) and 16 meters spherical error probable (SEP) position with GPS as navigation aid. A position error of less than 2% of the distance traveled will be required for systems without GPS. In addition, the land navigation system (LNS) must maintain the desired accuracy for a 12 hour mission. All of the aforementioned requirements must be met at minimal cost. An evaluation of existing, future and past navigation technologies (e.g., inertial, magnetic) was conducted to determine applicability to the UGV low cost land navigation system. The results of this evaluation are presented