Week 26 - Braking and stopping

The task for this week is going to revolve around trying to make the car stop when another car stops in front of it, then accelerating again when the car is no longer near it. In order to achieve this, we are revisiting the actuators, which are going to need to start using the braking system.

So, first thing first, we need to recollect the whole data again, this time adding more information such as the brakes and just in case, extra information such as the previous velocity and the car position. For the purpose of testing the quality of the data and the way we process it, we test this with only a single map: Town02.

Once we have trained the model, it is time to test it! But in doing so, we find out that the car is not moving… the only way to know why is to keep on experimenting with configurations. Doing a little tweak here and there, we found out that the car needed a little push for it to start moving. Once the car moves, it seems to do everything as expected, following the road without problems, stopping right when it encounters a car in front of it and continuing moving when the car in front resumes its course.

Now that we are on a good track ;) we need to keep working along this lines. To do this, I was proposed the idea of adding to the training input the previous velocity, but this will be a story to tell for the next week.