EMS-Vision: combining on- and off-road driving

In the past, work at the Universitat der Bundeswehr Muenchen (UBM) has been focused on autonomous road vehicles. During the last four years the Expectation-based Multi-focal Saccadic Vision (EMS-Vision) system has been developed and implemented. EMS-Vision is the 3rd generation dynamic vision system following the 4-D approach. The explicit representation of the own capabilities combined with a complex control and information flow allows the implementation of decision units for goal oriented activation of locomotion and perception. Due to this general approach and in contrast to former UBM systems that were specially designed and optimized for certain limited scenarios and domains, e.g., road following on Autobahnen, the EMS-Vision system can handle complex driving missions spanning multiple domains. It has been realized on a decentralized parallel hardware structure, exclusively built of commercial off-the-shelf components, in both UBM test vehicles VaMoRs and VaMP. Results from an autonomously performed mission on the UBM campus are discussed.