Where am I now? Since my last update, the hardware of Ironhide is completely finished. I initially encountered problems with the DC actuator not working or being connected, but I was able to troubleshoot and find out that my problem was the lack of a connection between the Raspberry Pi and the standby port of the Pololu Motor Driver. Once I added the connection, I found that power had to be supplied to the standby connection, as well as the PWM module must be activated in order to have the motor working correctly. My final circuit design, and a full picture of Ironhide can be seen below.

After deciding to author my own code library, I decided I should first author hardware tests because I hadn’t done that yet. I created a GitHub Repository for Ironhide and started with elementary tests utilizing the GPIO python library. After creating motortest.py and servotest.py I found that my servo worked, but without exact details on the frequency the servo operates, I wasn’t able to find the true middle value for the duty cycle. I just did train and error to find the best middle I could between duty cycle values of 2 to 12. After messing with those values, I found that the motor didn’t work at all, and I started to panic a bit. I had spent so much time on the hardware, and I barely had anything to show for it. After I encountered this roadblock I became set on fixing it, so I searched the web for documentation on interacting with DC actuators, Motor Drivers, and a Raspberry Pi. I finally found the problem, which was a missing standby connection between the raspberry pi and the motor driver.

My initial roadmap had hardware completely finished by spring break, and code exploration after we returned from spring break. I didn’t put finishing on the hardware just yet, but I decided it was time to start exploring the DonkeyCar code library that I plan on using to operate the car. DonkeyCar is a Self-Driving platform for RC hobby cars that has multiple components:

• It is an Open Source Hardware design that makes it easy for you to build your own car
• It is a simulator that enables you to use Donkey without hardware
• It is a community of enthusiasts, developers and data scientists that enjoy racing, coding and discussing the future of ML, Cars and who will win the next race.

Where am I now? After completing research about Computer Vision models to be used on the car, and research on hardware specs for the car itself, I gathered all the parts necessary to construct the car. My final list of hardware is:

Objective

1. Build a low-cost (<$100) autonomous car for under-privileged classrooms to discover robotics
2. Create an accompanying guide for hardware construction
3. Author a small library of end-to-end deep learning models to pair with the physical construction of the robot
4. Have the autonomous car be able to travel around an oval racing course while switching lanes in order to avoid obstacles