A picture is worth a thousand words Phase 1 Demo & Presentation Version 1.0.0 Exterior Testing on Feb 21st Testing on Jan 31st Other images Credits Thanks to the following people for taking the pictures: Ms. Richardson Mr. Hale (and his amazing editing) My parents Michael Meng Feel free to reach out to me…
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Introduction After our somewhat unsuccessful demo last Wednesday, my partner Michael Meng exclaimed, “there is no hope for deep learning”. The future is not that grim, but Michael is right to a certain degree. Deep learning has flaws and our deep learning powered self-driving golf cart certainly has lots of flaws. Today, I would like to…
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Yesterday, Michael and I had the final demo & presentation of our autonomous golf cart. Phase 1 of the development process is now completed, which means a couple of different things for us: For the rest of this trimester, we will no longer be developing the goal cart. We will continue the phase 2 of the…
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Introduction After implementing the steering system, our focus has been on the cruise control system. The golf cart needs to stop when it encounters an obstacle, and continue to move forward once the obstacle is removed. At the time when we tested & implement this basic cruise control system, the golf cart had no odometer…
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Today is a very special day for us. We have successfully tested the autonomous steering system for the self-driving cart. Here is a video. For the past 27 days (not counting weekend only 19 days), Michael and I have been working on the autonomous steering system for the self-driving golf cart. Frankly, I have never been…
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Since Tuesday, Michael and I have been testing the self-driving golf cart on the road. It has been a very very exciting process. Tuesday: This was the first real-world test with the brand new steering control system. Just like any “first test”, the cart didn’t work. Thanks to our robotics teacher Ms. Hayes-Golding, we were…
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Today, we put together the whole entire system on the golf cart. The setup includes: NVIDIA Jetson — the main controller for the vehicle A webcam on the front of the vehicle A computer monitor (placed on the cupholder) A mouse A keyboard A DC motor for steering An Arduino with a motor controller module…
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Introduction After engineering the steering mechanism, we needed a software & hardware system that can control the steering motor. We need to send commands to the motor from the Jetson to control its turning. What happened Initially, we landed on the TB6612 motor controller by SparkFun. After burning six of them, Michael and I decided…
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Before we can figure out our testing site. We wanted to implement the Arduino controlled acceleration system. We decided to take a bold step and take apart the accelerator pedal and cut all of its wires. The whole entire accelerator sensor is a potentiometer. Potentiometer (pot for short) is everywhere in electronics, from speakers…
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This is the second iteration of the design. As I described in the previous post, I added a PVC pipe around the steering column. The bottom of the pipe is screwed into the front of the cart. The motor mount is screwed into the PVC pipe and stabilized with two hose clamps. After about a week…
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Neil Nie 