Design of autonomous vehicles is a very hot research topic and it is expected to be more popular in near future. The greatest difference of autonomous vehicles from classical mobile robots comes from its steering mechanism. In general, classical mobile robots use differential steering while autonomous vehicles use Ackerman steering. In this study, we design a low cost mobile robot with Ackerman steering model and by this way our robot can be used to test autonomous vehicle algorithms. A low resolution camera has been used to solve indoor localization problem by image processing tools. Instead of an expensive LIDAR sensor, a low cost infrared distance measurement sensor is used together with a servo motor in order to scan the environment. As a case study, an autonomous navigation algorithm (Follow the Gap) has been applied for the developed system and successful autonomous driving performance is observed during experimental tests.

I will make this project open source in soon.

You can find the related paper here. And the related video;