THE DEVELOPMENT OF AUTONOMOUS RACING ROBOT BENDER

Successful use of autonomous mobile robot in outdoor environment is nowadays still a challenge for developers. Navigation, localization and control issues are generally independent on the size of the robot, therefore smaller, low budget platforms can be successfully used for the development of appropriate algorithms. The paper describes the development of such a platform – autonomous racing wheel robot Bender, equipped only with odometry IRC sensors and camera, which won the Robotour 2006 competition. Both hardware issues and algorithms description including low and high level software layers are stated in the paper.