Low-cost heterogeneous unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) testbed for systems of autonomous vehicles research

Ahstract-This paper presents design of a mobile testbed of scale-sized UGVs designed for multi-agent autonomous vehicle missions. Small scale autonomous vehicles are used as a means for validating larger scale systems in a low-cost manner. This system is unique in how vehicle trajectories are managed using a mobile relative localization provider available to the system, which can be thought of as a mobile version of a Vicon or Optitrack system. A multi-agent mapping scenario is provided as an initial test of the testbed system. In the scenario, each vehicle in the testbed has roles in accurately mapping objects within an environment. Robots and data are managed with the Robot Operating System (ROS), which provides access to visualizations through Robot Visualization (RVIZ).