Application of Smoothing Spline in Determining the Unmanned Ground Vehicles Route Based on Ultra-Wideband Distance Measurements

Unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) are technically complex machines to operate in difficult or dangerous environmental conditions. In recent years, there has been an increase in research on so called “following vehicles”. The said concept introduces a guide—an object that sets the route the platform should follow. Afterwards, the role of the UGV is to reproduce the mentioned path. The article is based on the field test results of an outdoor localization subsystem using ultra-wideband technology. It focuses on determining the guide’s route using a smoothing spline for constructing a UGV’s path planning subsystem, which is one of the stages for implementing a “follow-me” system. It has been shown that the use of a smoothing spline, due to the implemented mathematical model, allows for recreating the guide’s path in the event of data decay lasting up to a several seconds. The innovation of this article originates from influencing studies on the smoothing parameter of the estimation errors of the guide’s location.