Goals

• Develop a miniature car that will navigate to a user-specified location with unknown obstacles and disturbances
• Develop wireless communication between the car and user’s Android phone
  • Monitor sensor readings and states of car
  • Remotely send instructions
  • Streams live video feed
  • Capable of emergency override

Abstract

As demand increases for completely autonomous vehicles, new methods for navigation and safety need to be investigated to determine a viable solution. The team is currently building and modeling a small-scale car to explore real-time control application. The project is intended to illustrate the behavior of an autonomous vehicle with a unique obstacle avoidance algorithm to navigate an unforeseen environment. The team is designing and building an autonomous car that is capable of following a predetermined route and adapting to avoid unforeseen obstacles. This system consists of an Android phone, Android application, Raspberry Pi, and Arduino. The Android phone serves as the application environment, a front-end user interface with the system. The on-phone application receives video feedback from the car and the team is currently in the process of developing controls (direction, speed and manual override). The Raspberry Pi processes video and broadcasts this live video stream to the Android device. Performing controller calculations on the Raspberry Pi is currently still in development, but will serve as a mode of communication between the Arduino, via serial connection, and the Android device, via wireless communication. The Arduino provides a node for sensor readings, which are sent to the Raspberry Pi and Android phone for processing. Overall, the project simulates the methodologies being investigated today in the field of autonomous systems.