Junior Design - Autonomous Car Design

The Project

Junior design is a course that undergraduate Electrical and Computer Engineers take at Tufts that is intended to prepare them for the real world of product design. The project boils down to creating an autonomous car that completes a route and some sort of challenge - in this project, the task was to create an autonomous car that could complete a route that looked like roads and avoid pedestrians as well as communicate to a watch tower about its position.

Key details of the course are:

• Every robot is made by a team of 3 Electrical engineering students.
• Each team member needs to keep an engineering notebook documenting the design process and parts of the circuit for reference
• Parts of the robot are outsourced to other teams in the class by designing a specification sheet and requesting the design.

What makes this project hard is:

• Every part of the bot is made using rudimentary circuit components except the arduino processor and the physical internals of the motors.
• All rudimentary parts used in the project have spec sheets with somewhat wrong data
• Most parts used have enough variation to make the programming required for between identical components significantly different
• The project description and requirements are designed to be almost impossible to complete, and the actual project requirements need to be determined by talking to stakeholders - (the professor)

The Bots

The two bots have many different components bundled compactly into a single design. Each of the sections is created using basic circuit elements including resistors, transistors, capacitors, leds, and inductors. The complete robots shown below include two systems that aren't labeled and are located in the back of the bots - the power distribution system and the motor power system.

The bots above are the final design of the bots. To the left is "VEHICLOTORE RUNNER OF RED LIGHTS" by team Zinnobar and to the right is "Susan", of team Greige.

Challenges

Challenge 1

TODO: EXPLAIN WHAT THIS CHALLENGE REQUIRED

/* excerpt from program.h */
// CHALLENGE 1 BOT 1 ------------------------------------------------------

    // the code for this challenge is too long to reasonably place in this 
    // readme, but it can be found in lines  41-79 of 'program.h' above.

Challenge 2

TODO: EXPLAIN WHAT THIS CHALLENGE REQUIRED

/* excerpt from program.h */
// CHALLENGE 2 BOT 1 ------------------------------------------------------
    {THREAD_3, 1,  {listen,     &c2b1_rcv_500ms}},        // receive 500ms message
    {THREAD_3, 5,  {move_time,  &c2b1_fwd_12in}},         // move forward 12
    {THREAD_3, 8,  {flashled,   &c2b1_flash_head}},       // 
    {THREAD_3, 10, {move_time,  &c2b1_stop_1}},           // STOP #1
    {THREAD_3, 15, {move_time,  &c2b1_turn_180}},         // Turn around 180
    {THREAD_3, 20, {move_time,  &c2b1_back_3}},           // Backwards 3
    {THREAD_3, 25, {move_time,  &c2b1_stop_2}},           // STOP #2
    {THREAD_3, 30, {move_time,  &c2b1_left_90}},          // Turn left 90
    {THREAD_3, 35, {move_time,  &c2b1_right_1}},          // Turn right 
    {THREAD_3, 40, {move_time,  &c2b1_lightstop_1}},      // Light stop
    {THREAD_3, 45, {move_time,  &c2b1_right_2}},          // Turn right
    {THREAD_3, 50, {move_time,  &c2b1_lightstop_2}},      // Light stop
    {THREAD_3, 55, {move_time,  &c2b1_right_3}},          // Turn right 
    {THREAD_3, 60, {move_time,  &c2b1_back_to_start}},    // Do your best to MOVE TO START
    {THREAD_3, 65, {talk,       &c2b1_send_500ms}},       // Send 500ms message to Bot 2 (stop auto)

Challenge 3

TODO: EXPLAIN WHAT THIS CHALLENGE REQUIRED

    /* excerpt from program.h */
    // CHALLENGE 3 BOT 1 ------------------------------------------------------
    {THREAD_5, 1,  {move_time,  &c3b1_wait_start}},
    {THREAD_5, 3,  {move_if,    &c3b1_forward_light}},    //move forward until light sensed
    {THREAD_5, 5,  {move_time,  &c3b1_stop_5s}},          //stop 5 seconds
    {THREAD_5, 10, {talk,       &c3b1_send_500ms}},
    {THREAD_5, 15, {flashled,   &c3b1_flash_head_twice}},
    {THREAD_5, 20, {flashled,   &c3b1_illuminate_turnL}},
    {THREAD_5, 25, {flashled,   &c3b1_illuminate_turnR}},

How All This Works

Hardware:

The hardware components of the bot can be broken up into 5 sections with the corresponding code

• Power Distribution System
• Communications Unit
• lights
  • lights.h - interface to light controls
• Motor Power System
  • smart_motor.h - control motor with smooth movements
• Color Sensor
  • color.h - define colors
  • csensor.h - control sensor
  • classification.h - convert sensor values to colors
  • classification.cpp

Software:

In order to fully control the bot, a large amount of code is required to program into the robot autonomous behavior. The files responsible for dictating the autonomous behavior of the bot are:

• Greigeobar.ino - program entry point and pin definitions
• smart_bot.h - interface to robot hardware
• program_functions.h - contains the operational units performable by the robot
• program.h - contains the sequence of operational units that make up a state program
• states.h - defines what a state is
• state_machine.h - runs program in program.h and uses it to control smart_bot

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Contributers:

• Ashton Stephens
• Liam Crowley
• Ashish Neupane
• Aji Sjamsu
• Joseph Meng
• Victor Dinh