Adaptive Experimental Design for Path-following Performance Assessment of Unmanned Vehicles
This work addresses the need for standardized experimental methods in robotics, specifically for USV path-following, but is incremental as it builds on existing DoE approaches.
The paper tackles the problem of defining Good Experimental Methodologies (GEMs) for Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs) by proposing a two-step adaptive experimental procedure based on statistically designed experiments (DoE) to evaluate path-following performance, tested on the Charlie USV simulator.
The definition of Good Experimental Methodologies (GEMs) in robotics is a topic of widespread interest due also to the increasing employment of robots in everyday civilian life. The present work contributes to the ongoing discussion on GEMs for Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs). It focuses on the definition of GEMs and provides specific guidelines for path-following experiments. Statistically designed experiments (DoE) offer a valid basis for developing an empirical model of the system being investigated. A two-step adaptive experimental procedure for evaluating path-following performance and based on DoE, is tested on the simulator of the Charlie USV. The paper argues the necessity of performing extensive simulations prior to the execution of field trials.