The design of a radar-based navigation system for large outdoor vehicles

This paper describes the design of a navigation system for an autonomous guided vehicle (AGV) system able to transport ISO standard cargo containers in a port environment. The navigation system is based on the use of millimeter wave radar sensors detecting the range and bearing to a number of fixed known beacons. The central navigation algorithm is an extended Kalman filter that exploits a model of the vehicle motion and radar observations to continuously provide estimates of the vehicle location. The main contribution of the system described in this paper lies in the use of a new, and relatively sophisticated process model describing the motion of a large vehicle, and in the incorporation of this with a novel sensing system.