Single-thruster hovercraft with rotation
Description
This project uses Rapidly-Exploring Random Trees (RRTs) to compute
a path for a hovercraft through a user-defined obstacle course.
Difficulties
The design of the hover craft was fairly straight-forward. However
the project was several orders of magnitude more difficult since I used
no pre-existing code and tried to make the model to modularly fit into
the RRT algorithm.
State Equations
The hovercraft model is a simple point-mass with a thruster on the
rear. The craft can be rotated a maximum of (+/-)0.2*pi to induce
steering. Since this causes an off-balance thrust, we must be careful
to take the component of the thrust in the x and y directions for
correct calculation of the x and y acceleration.
Example
Here we see the hovercraft just trying to make its way to the opposite
corner of the playing field without hitting any obstacles.
Code
The code is in the compressed package csim-final.tgz.
To be continued...
But a simple robot with such a simplistic turning strategy is boring.
What if it could spin frictionlessly, too. Then we could have more
exciting results...
Steven Bergom
Last modified: Thu Apr 29 20:33:24 CDT 1999