Autonomous vehicles are equipped with a variety of instrumentation and controls depending upon the mission of the target vehicle. One of the biggest challenges in developing low risk autonomous vehicles is keeping the cost down. Leveraging from low cost instrumentation developed for high volume consumer applications, inexpensive microcontrollers, ultrasonic sensors and a global positioning systems result in a low-cost autonomous vehicle that will navigate to a desired location with obstacle avoidance. This paper describes the design of a low budget autonomous vehicle using a modified radio control car chassis equipped with a GPS and ultrasonic sensors to navigate to a predetermined geographical location with obstacle avoidance. The focus of the project was to determine how much capability could be achieved on a minimal budget. A budget shows that high performance can be readily achieved using low cost processors and commercially available instrumentation. Since the system is battery operated, attention is given to power consumption.
