Category Archives: Milestones

Semester 2 Update

Milestones

Our goals for this semester were to turn our proof-of-concept car and turn it into something a little more deserving of the title, “Racecar,” as well as taking care of a few other minor upgrades that we decided were necessary. This included but, was not limited to:

  • Upgrading from a Raspberry Pi 4 to a Pi 5
  • Altering the navigation parameters to handle higher velocities
  • Tuning the motors PID controller accordingly
  • Running the navigation software locally on the Pi instead of over WiFi
  • Implementing ultrasonic sensors to help detect glass and any obstacles below the LiDAR
  • Remodeling the hardware enclosure to give it a more aesthetic look

So far, we have succesfully transfered over our python scripts from the old Pi to the new one and were able to read the odometry data, run the navigation software on the Pi, and designed a new enclosure with a much better look than the previous box. We are currently working on implementing the ultrasonic sensors into our racecar specifically, how they are going to be mounted and how the navigation software will interpret their data.

Success!

Experimentation, Milestones

After an entire semester of work, we finally got the RC car to navigate 100% autonomously! As soon as we got it working we took it to the hallways to run some tests. We gathered some trash cans and laid them in the hallway as obstacles. The car successfully navigated around them and could even go around corners and through doorways. Right now, the biggest flaw of the car is that it has trouble recognizing that a window should be considered a wall since the LiDAR’s laser just goes right through it. This is not a major concern for us right now because in any other scenario, the car works just fine. This is something we will look into next semester. Over the next few days we will be working out any small bugs that may exist in the code to get the project ready for demonstration on Wednesday.

Images of a trial run of the cars autonomous navigation can be found on the Progress page.

Making Progress

Hardware, Milestones, Software

In the past week we have made significant progress in the development of our racecar. First, we finally got Gazebo working and were able to simulate a robot similar to our racecar in an environment and used it’s simulated sensors to navigate the robot to a selected point. This was a major stride towards the eventual path planning and obstacle avoidance of our actual racecar.

We also wanted to make a housing for all our hardware so that there were as few wires and equipment showing as possible. The design of this housing was done in Onshape and then printed on an Elegoo Neptune 4 Pro 3D printer. The print itself took about 7.5 hours and 300 grams of filament but luckily it only took two tries to get everything to fit together nicely.

Images of the Gazebo simulation and housing design can be found on the Progress page

Connecting the Raspberry Pi to Wi-Fi

Challenges, Milestones, Software

Today, we spent about two and a half hours working with the Raspberry Pi in an effort to get it communicating with the laptop via Wi-Fi. Our plan was to connect them both to the schools network since we wouldn’t have to worry about the two being too far apart. Something about the schools network was not allowing them to communicate and we could not find a way around that so, instead we settled for the personal hotspot on Cole’s iPhone. Unfortunately this means that someone will have to follow behind the RC car with the laptop once we actually get it to navigate the halls of the engineering building. While this isn’t the most ideal solution, it’s better than nothing.