Panacea: An Active Sensor Controller for the ALVINN Autonomous Driving System
Panacea is a modular system which incorporates a steerable sensor
into an existing neural network driving system, ALVINN.
A fixed camera cannot see the road when it makes sharp bends. For a
vision system that builds a map of the road, it is straightforward to
point the camera down the road; but ALVINN directly outputs a steering
command without generating an intermediate road representation. Insight
from the training scheme used in ALVINN, however, provides an interpretation
of the steering command in terms of the road geometry and appropriate
camera pointing strategies.
Tests on the Carnegie Mellon Navlab II with a steerable camera have shown
that the system significantly improves ALVINN's performance, particularly
in situations requiring sharp turns and quick responses.
Rahul Sukthankar
(rahuls@ri.cmu.edu)
Last Updated: Sep 16, 1995 by rahuls@ius4.ius.cs.cmu.edu