Project Raptor: An Autonomous Vehicle Platform Copyright © 2019 Chude Qian, James C. Schmidt, Christina L. Gallishen Semester 1 Spring 2019 Chude Qian (EE), James C. Schmidt (SC, EE), Christina L. Gallishen (EE) Instructor: Prof. Gregory S. Lee (EECS398/9) Technical Advisor: Prof. Francis L. Merat (Emeritus Professor | EECS) Presented: April 19, 2019, Intersections Poster Session, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH Project Raptor is a low-cost expandable experimental Ackermann-Steering (car-like) autonomous vehicle platform build based on a modified Power Wheels platform. The goal of this project is to develop an autonomous vehicle platform on which future research can be conducted, and can easily be duplicated by other autonomous vehicle research groups. The original Power Wheels platform has minimal control and circuitry components. By retro-fitting the platform using servo and DC motor controllers, we are now able to control the vehicle electronically. Beyond that, sensors are being installed for future research applications with the potential of raising the vehicle to autonomy level 3 (based on SAE standard J3016). The controlling software is built using the ROS developing standard for robots guaranteeing future expandability. Constraints and Standards Project Budget Courses and Work Breakdown We would like to thank Marc Krumbein, John Gibbons, David Jarvi, Wyatt Newman, Larry Sears, David Kazdan, and the CWRU IGVC team for all of their unwavering support of this project over the course of the semester. They have been instrumental in the success of this project over its duration. Problem Statement Vehicle Design System Control Structure Looking at the vehicle as a whole, there are numerous components to control while maintaining safety. A three level layer control system was implemented on the vehicle. The top layer (based on Linux and ROS) serves as coordinator and post processor for the vehicle. The middle layer of control is implemented using Arduino, aiming to preserve real time system commands, in case the vehicle must be emergency stopped. The middle layer also directly handles the remote control signal input when a human is operating the vehicle. When in remote control mode, the upper layer is not in use. The last and bottom layer is in charge of emergency stopping and cutting the power to the drive mechanism. It is responsible for stopping the vehicle when both the top layer coordinator and middle layer controller failed. Velocity and Acceleration Steering Minimum Steering Radius is tested at 0.5 m/s: averaging 5 meters *Note 1: Road test data was collected on Saturday, April 6th, 2019 *Note 2: Autonomous capability has not yet tested Results Constraints An autonomous car has numerous design projects hidden in the larger overall project. Completing and financing all these tasks in a single semester is difficult, especially sensing and control. An additional challenge was that many of the components operated on different voltages, namely 5VDC, 12VDC, 24VDC, and 120VAC. Furthermore, due to the nature of an EECS project being electrical and not heavily mechanical, the idea was to work with the sourced plastic vehicle and not spend time altering it. Standards IGVC, “Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition Rule Book,” Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition Rule Book. IGVC Competition, Rochester, MI, 2018. Standard Specification for Additive Manufacturing File Format, ASTM Standard 52915, 2016 Standard Practice for Selection of Wire and Cable Size in AWG or Metric Units, ASTM Standard F1883-03, 2013 Power over Ethernet Standard, IEEE Standard 802.3at, 2009 OSI Model for Ethernet Communication, ISO/IEC Standard 7498-1, 1994 ROS Coordinate Frames for Mobile Platforms, ROS Standard REP-0105, 2010 Steering The steering on a Power Wheels is manual. It was driven by a long shaft attached to the steering shaft and steering wheel. There were no pre-manufactured points where a servo could be directly installed for auto