Midterm: Open Source Autonomous Vehicle Controller

Tue, 01 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As part of the Open Source Autonomous Vehicle Controller Project my proposal under the mentorship of Aaron Hunter and Carlos Espinosa aimed to create comprehensive technical documentation to help onboard new users of the OSAVC controller.

I have accomplished the following:

From the KiCad Schematic Editor, created pinouts of the I/O connectors on the OSAVC.
Detailed a hardware overview of the OSAVC by labeling and describing each electrical component.
Documented the setup for loading code on the OSAVC, including software such as Git, MPLAB X, XC32 Compiler, and serial terminal and hardware by showing how to connect the PICKit3 and OSAVC to a PC.
Tested the OSAVC by receiving and transmitting characters in the serial port into a buffer.
Fixed bugs/errors in the NEO_M8N GPS module library and PWM motors library.
Created a new library for the uni and bidirectional ESC brushless motors.
Created a user-interfaced test harness for all peripherals: serial, IMU, GPS, encoder, PWM actuators, radio telemetry, Mavlink heartbeat, radio controller, and LIDAR.
Incorporated new user interface element and fixed video streaming errors in the Flask app running on the Raspberry Pi 4 communicating with the OSAVC.
Documented both software and hardware steps to run the OSAVC with a companion computer such as a Raspberry Pi 4.
Highlighted common problems encountered with the OSAVC.
Created a contributor’s guide for others to create new libraries or contribute to the OSAVC project.
Designed a switching voltage regulator in SOLIDWORKS
Designed a self balancing bot that employs the OSAVC in SOLIDWORKS

Future Work

Currently, the laser cutter at UCSC is in maintenance, so we couldn’t assemble the self balancing bot yet. Once we assemble it, I will finish and document the control algorithms. We can also try incorporating ML models on the Raspberry Pi with the Coral USB accelerator on the self balancing bot.

Intro: Open Source Autonomous Vehicle Controller

Tue, 30 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As part of the Open Source Autonomous Vehicle Controller Project my proposal under the mentorship of Aaron Hunter and Carlos Espinosa aims to create comprehensive technical documentation to help onboard new users of the OSAVC controller. I will be writing tutorials and examples to demonstrate how to start with an OSAVC, programming it with the robotic equivalent of HelloWorld and later moving onto more sophisticated explanations. Hence, this will encourage more applications and wider adoption in the field of autonomous vehicles and expand the community of OSAVC users.

Chiling Han | UCSC OSPO

Midterm: Open Source Autonomous Vehicle Controller

Future Work

Intro: Open Source Autonomous Vehicle Controller