VaMoRs a) 1985 – 1990
Basic vehicle [5 – ton (metric) van]
- Standard ‘Kastenwagen’ Daimler-Benz L 508 D
- axle distance a: 3.5 m
- cg to front axle 2 m; cg to rear axle 1.5 m
- mass (on front, rear axle) 4000 (1714, 2286) kg
- max. speed: 96 km/h
- el. power generator: 220 V, 6 KVA
Installations for autonomous operation
- Hydraulic pressure for braking: 90 bar
- max. deceleration: 5.5 m/s2
- torque motor for steering in left front wheel bay,
- first gaze control platform on dashboard: 2 axes
- BVV2 system for image sequence processing [Graefe 1984]
Video – 1986 VaMoRs in skidpan DBAG-Stuttgart
Video – VaMoRsAutobahn Dingolfing 1987
VaMoRs b) 1991 – 1997
System improvements 1991:
- More powerful electric generator with external cooling; el. power: 10 kVA. The external cooling slowed the vehicle down.
- Reduced max. speed: Vmax ~ 80 km/h
- Gaze control platform with smaller cameras moved from dashboard to hanging from the roof;
- additional computer rack and work desk on port-side (~ 1 m high).
- Transputer system with 45 processors plus one 32-bit PC as human interface;
- GPS – antenna at top left rear.
- electric power generator: 220 V, 10 KVA
A.3.7 TurningOffOntoCrossroads
Video – 1996 Turn Right NBB-Taxiway.mp4
VaMoRs c) 1997 – 2004
Transition to ‘Commercial-Off-The-Shelf’ (COTS) components and to cross-country driving with EMS – vision; real-time, full-frame stereo vision by a custom board plugged into one of the Dual-PC:
H.1.3 EMS vision system on COTS – PC hardware
with four Dual-PC (Pentium class);
- Cooperation with US-program ‘ARL – Demo3’ (‘AutoNav’) allowed integration of real-time stereo vision hardware into EMS-vision:
- VFE_200 of Pyramid Vision Technology (PVT, offspring of Sarnoff SRI); 2000, volume ~ 20 liter
- ACADIA-board of PVT (2003), ‘Europe-size’ plug-in board into a standard PC.
