Laser-Guided Autonomous Snowplow Design

A laser-guided autonomous snowplow was designed for participation in the Second Annual Autonomous Snowplow Competition. The snowplow is all-electric and features a four-wheel drive, a 1.07-m wide blade, constant velocity wheel controllers, gyroscopic heading stabilization and a scanning laser for positioning. Because of the use of a single rotating laser, the robot is referred to as the Monocular Autonomously-Controlled Snowplow or M.A.C.S. The vehicle weighs 526 lbs and measures 1.27 m long, 0.96 m wide and 0.97 m tall. A flexible, Matlab®-based development environment was implemented for rapid prototyping and algorithm design. M.A.C.S. uses WiFi communications for remote control and relay of status information, as well as a separate radio-control for power shut-off. During the competition, M.A.C.S. operated fully autonomous to clear snow from two competition fields: a 1-m wide by 10-m long “I”-shaped field, and a “U”-shaped field with a width of 1 m that fits inside a 10-by-5 m rectangle. M.A.C.S. successfully plowed both competition fields and, for doing so, received all of the possible 75 points. The M.A.C.S team also earned an additional 3.16 bonus points out of a possible 5 for time of course completion. In addition, Ohio University received a score of 23.25 points out of a possible 25 for their technical paper and presentations. Ohio University won the competition with a total score of 101.41 points out of a possible 105, including bonus points.