Design and integration of the sensing and control subsystems of CajunBot

This paper covers the design and integration of the sensing and control subsystems of the CajunBot autonomous ground vehicle, which competed and qualified in the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge. The event took place 8-13 March 2004 near Los Angeles, CA, USA, and closed near Las Vegas, NV, USA. The challenge was to create a vehicle that would travel without intervention approximately 150 mi through desert terrain using a set of waypoints while avoiding obstacles, both natural and man-made, in under ten hours for a prize of US ε. In order to make the route more challenging, the exact route was only provided the morning of the race, two hours from start time. The starting line, in Barstow, CA, USA, consisted of six chutes separated by concrete barriers from which a total of fifteen autonomous ground vehicles, or bots, were launched.