Week 3-4: First Rolls
Summary
Over the past two weeks, I’ve made significant progress by successfully programming two pilots, named Pilot 1 and Pilot 1.5. These pilots were designed to follow a red line on a racing circuit autonomously. By tweaking the PID controller parameters, I managed to optimize the lap time of the car. Alongside this practical work, I also deepened my understanding of autonomous driving by reading a second master’s thesis.
Progress This Week
Pilot Development
Last time, I was focused on getting the car to complete a circuit while adhering to a red line. After fine-tuning the PID controller’s parameters, Pilot 1 was able to complete the lap in 1:45 minutes without significant oscillations. Although the car was stable, it was relatively slow. This led me to develop Pilot 1.5, which completed the lap in about 1 minute. The challenge here was to minimize oscillations while maintaining a higher speed.
Speed Optimization
Our next objective is to create Pilot 2.0 with a secondary PID controller for linear speed management. The aim is to maximize speed during straight paths and moderate it during turns.
Tools and Frameworks
I utilized ROS for implementing the control algorithms and Gazebo for simulation. These tools are instrumental in creating a controlled environment for training and testing the pilots.
Upcoming Work
I am currently working on Pilot 2.0, which will serve as the basis for generating a dataset containing images and sensor data. This dataset will be used to train our first neural network-based autopilot.