Testing the Steering System with NVIDIA Jetson

Today, we put together the whole entire system on the golf cart. The setup includes:

1. NVIDIA Jetson — the main controller for the vehicle
2. A webcam on the front of the vehicle
3. A computer monitor (placed on the cupholder)
4. A mouse
5. A keyboard
6. A DC motor for steering
7. An Arduino with a motor controller module
8. A NiMH battery to power the steering motor
9. An Arduino and a shield for golf cart accelerator control
10. An external power source (which will be replaced by a Li-ion battery)

A couple of days ago, I made a top for the Jetson. Now it’s kind of protected. It’s stored in the front glove compartment.

The steering mechanism hasn’t changed much. However, we need to put more zip ties on the steering wheel to securely mount the metal gear.

The testing was largely unsuccessful. The Arduino code had some bug in it. This puzzles me because I didn’t change a single line after yesterday’s testing. After some debugging, we realized that the state/position of the motor is always 0. Either the encoder is failing, or our program has a bug. Because of the cold and dark night approaching, we decided to wait until Monday to figure out the issue.