Gps-guided-rover

GPS Guided Rover

A small rover is designed to drive directly to a GPS waypoint. Critical to the project, a small GPS unit is mounted on the rover’s surface. Location data is converted to a usable form and a path calculated. The car makes an estimate of how far to turn, then re-calibrates its location. This process continues until the car has reached its destination.

The project utilizes the Haversine formula to calculate the distance between two latitude and longitude points. Using the heading determined by the GPS proved highly inaccurate; I chose to mount a compass module to the car, reducing the need to constantly re-calibrate to correctly estimate the car’s heading.

Images and videos:

Below is an image of the processing sketch that allows a user to input the target latitude and longitude. It uses the modestmaps library for processing, permitting the application to display the target on a map with images downloaded from the internet. The library guicomponents creates text boxes in which latitude and longitude data can be input. Once a location has been determined, the user can press a button to send the coordinates to the arduino. To select the proper serial port, a help button is available.

Bill of Materials:

Wiki:

The wiki contains the contents of my engineering notebook and addresses many of the challenges encountered throughout the project.

https://github.com/amilich/GPS-Guided-Rover/wiki

Videos:

Here's my final video of the project:

Authors and Contributors

Andrew M. (@amilich)