Difference between revisions of "S15: Cyclops: Smart RC Car"

Revision as of 17:42, 1 May 2015

Grading Criteria

Cyclops: Smart RC Car

Abstract

The Smart RC car is an autonomous car that given a destination coordinate, drives to that location without any user interaction. It also has the ability to avoid obstacles in its path with the help of Sonar sensors.

Objectives & Introduction

In a world of autonomous systems, it is only a matter of time until we see all cars on the roads that drive themselves. Our concept for the RC car is based on that idea that cars will be able to drive themselves. The car will drive itself from a starting point to an ending point provided by the driver, which in our case is the host computer. The car will also have the capability to avoid obstacles in its path using three LV-MaxSonar-EZ0 Ultrasonic Range Sensors in the front. A GPSBee module with a SIM28 GPS receiver is being used to track the position of the car. This allows the car to navigate to the provided location autonomously. In addition to GPS navigation, a pixyCam will be used for lane detection to assist in the automated driving. So, jointly, the car will be able to drive following lanes, just like a real car on the road, and will have sensors to be able to avoid obstacles, along with reaching a destination with the help of GPS.

Team Members & Responsibilities

• Hector Prado-Guerrero
  • GPS / Navigation Development
• Calvin Lai
  • Sonar Sensors / Lane Guidance
• Britto Thomas
  • Motor Control / Wireless Communication

Schedule

Show a simple table or figures that show your scheduled as planned before you started working on the project. Then in another table column, write down the actual schedule so that readers can see the planned vs. actual goals. The point of the schedule is for readers to assess how to pace themselves if they are doing a similar project.

Parts List & Cost

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Design & Implementation

The design section can go over your hardware and software design. Organize this section using sub-sections that go over your design and implementation.

Hardware Design

Discuss your hardware design here. Show detailed schematics, and the interface here.

Hardware Interface

In this section, you can describe how your hardware communicates, such as which BUSes used. You can discuss your driver implementation here, such that the Software Design section is isolated to talk about high level workings rather than inner working of your project.

Software Design

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Implementation

This section includes implementation, but again, not the details, just the high level. For example, you can list the steps it takes to communicate over a sensor, or the steps needed to write a page of memory onto SPI Flash. You can include sub-sections for each of your component implementation.

Magnetometer

The magnetometer is used to find the current heading of the car. Without this heading, it would be impossible to face the vehicle in the correct direction without first driving in an arbitrary direction to orient according to GPS location.

The magnetometer is an HMC5883L which is a Triple Axis Compass Magnetometer Sensor Module. The module uses I2C for communication and outputs data in an XYZ, pitch, yaw, roll format. In order to use this data, it first needed to be converted to a heading in degrees.

Testing & Technical Challenges

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Include sub-sections that list out a problem and solution, such as:

My Issue #1

Discuss the issue and resolution.

1) Motor controls were not working as per the documentation of previous groups.

• It is important that there is a COMMON GROUND for the motor and the servo. So we connected all the required grounds to the SJSU boards ground and it all functioned as needed.

2) GPS XBee module from Seeedstudio v1.4

• Connecting the GPS directly into the XBee socket of the SJSU One board would not work. Reason being was that the breakout board for the GPS module created a Tx pin that was too weak to drive the Rx pin on the SJSU one board.
  • Solution: Solder a jumper wire directly to the Tx pin of the GPS chip on the breakout board, and connect that to the external Rx pin of the SJSU one board. The Rx pin of the GPS module works fine for sending commands to configure the GPS.

Conclusion

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Project Video

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Project Source Code

• Sourceforge Source Code Link

References

Acknowledgement

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References Used

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Appendix

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