A collision avoidance system, thus, not only decides how a vehicle behaves normally, but also how the vehicle behaves when faced with an imminent collision. It is highly desirous of such a system that it react almost instantaneously when collision is predicted, given the extremely short time interval between the detection and the actual collision. Obviously, the system must have a provision to detect the obstacle which might cause collision and provide information about this to the controlling element in the system.

The vehicle, (which from now on will be referred to as the "rover") is designed to navigate it's way around a specific path and reach a predefined final point.The path along which the rover is to navigate should be a flat surface.

Hence, the main design objective of the rover is to detect obstacles in the path, move around them and finally reach the destination.

While in future the project could be modified and intended as a means for safety of vehicles, it will initially serve to build a research prototype alone, and therefore, its scope will be limited to collision avoidance of a miniature vehicle such as an autonomous rover. It will not serve to be used directly on any vehicle. The project has been inspired from the Mars Pathfinder Mission, where the Sojourner Rover used a collision avoidance system to navigate the rocky Mars terrain. We have, however, built a much simpler system that adheres only to the very basic constraints for the system namely.

1. Navigate a path, given start and destination co-ordinates.

2. The path is absolutely horizontal.

3. Detect and successfully avoid five static obstacles in the path.

4. Arrive at the destination in the shortest period of time without any collisions.

5. The rover with the system installed must weigh a maximum of 6.kilograms.

6. The total cost of the project should not exceed Rs. 20,000/- ( ~ US$ 500 )

Keeping these constraints in mind, we have researched different types of motors, sensors, microcontrollers, and materials for chassis design and built what we think is a practical system that best fits our requirements and budget.