Self-driving Car

This project is about a team of 20 getting a car to self-drive to a selected destination. This involves working with an RTOS running on a low power processor and various different processor boards working together over a CAN bus.

Schedule

<TODO>

Controllers

Given below are the controllers, their duties, and the number of people involved. It is quite possible that one team gets done with their part, but that doesn't mean your job is done. If you are done, help others. If you are done, and the primary objective is met (the car can self-drive), then add more features. There are many things you can do, and the 16-week semester definitely won't provide an opportunity to sit and relax. Get up and learn!.

Sensor Controller (3 members)

• Interfaced to front and rear vision.

  Consider Sonar, and/or IR sensors with long distance vision

• Sensors must be "filtered" and must provide reliable "vision"
• Provide "battery voltage" sense capability

  Better yet, provide percentage of remaining charge of the battery

• What else can you incorporate as additional features?

  Acceleration sensor to provide tilt? (for hill hold assist)

  Light sensor to turn on automatic headlights?

Motor Controller (3 members)

• Interfaced to motor control system of the car

  Provide a means to steer, and drive the car

• Provide feedback of the speed using a wheel encoder or speed sensor

I/O Unit (3 members)

• Provide an LCD screen to report car status

  Errors and communication status

  Sensor values

• Buttons to start and stop the car
• Button hard-coded to set a specific destination
• Provide means to turn on/off the headlights

Communication Bridge + Android (4 members)

• Provide means to communicate and display status on an Android/iPhone device
• Allow a user to see sensor values, car speed (etc)
• Allow a user to select a destination from Google Earth

Geographical Controller (3 members)

• Interface to a 5Hz or faster GPS
• Interface to a backup GPS in case primary one fail (use a different manufacturer)
• Interface to a compass
• Allow a GPS coordinate to be "set"

  Based on the set coordinate, calculate, and provide CAN data regarding

  the current heading, and the desired heading to reach the destination

• This unit needs to compute the "heading degree" to reach the destination

Master Controller(4 members)

• This is the primary unit that communicates with every controller to drive the car
• This unit shall also turn on headlights (etc), and be the "brain" of the car
• Upon a detection of a "Start" condition, work with different controllers to drive the car

  Motor Controller and Geographical Controller

  Command the Motor Controller based on Sensor Controller and Geographical Controller data

Communication

Each controller shall provide a means to communicate with the other controllers. Before you read any further, it requires that you have deep knowledge of the CAN bus. The most important thing to realize is that CAN bus is 1:1 communication rather than 1:many. Although most of the time, all the controllers should only communicate with the Master Controller, sometimes there may be a necessity for any one controller to communicate with a specific controller, therefore we need to provide a means to facilitate this. Given below is an example communication interface for one controller.

Each controller shall pick a controller number. The controller with the highest priority shall pick the lowest ID. Using this protocol, each controller can specifically send a message to any other controller, and likewise, upon a received message, we can tell who it came from.

Recommended CAN Message ID format

CAN Communication Protocol (29-bit CAN ID)

Destination Controller (8-bit) B28:B21

Source Controller (8-bit) B20:B14

Message number (13-bit) B13:B00

I recommend a standard similar to the following:

• Message ID 0x000 for critical message
• Message ID 0x100 - 0x1ff for "common" message types
• Message ID 0x200 - 0x2FF for "command" messages
• Message ID 0x300 - 0x3FF for "subscription" messages
• Message ID 0x400 - 0x4FF for "subscribed" messages

Example Communication table for the Geographical Controller

Geographical Controller Communication Table

Message ID	Purpose	Data layout	Notes
0x100	Report status	1 byte: Error code, 1 byte: CPU usage % ... (etc)
0x200	Set GPS destination	4 bytes(float): Longitude, 4 bytes(float): Latitude
0x301	Subscribe to GPS data	byte 0: Subscription rate, 1=1Hz, 5=5Hz, 10=10Hz etc.	See message number 0x401 for response data
0x401	Subscribed data of 0x301	4 bytes(float): Longitude, 4 bytes(float): Latitude

Sample Code

/**
 * Create a "union" whose struct overlaps with the uint32_t
 */
typedef union {
    struct {
        uint32_t id : 14;   ///< Message ID
        uint32_t src : 8;   ///< Source ID
        uint32_t dst : 8;   ///< Destination ID
    };
    /// This "raw" overlaps with <DST> <SRC> <ID>
    uint32_t raw;

} __attribute__((packed)) controller_id_t;

/**
 * Creates a message ID based on the message ID protocol
 * @param [in] src  The source controller ID
 * @param [in] dst  The destination controller ID
 * @param [in] msg_id  The message number to send to the dst controller
 *
 * @returns  The 32-bit message ID created by the input parameters
 */
uint32_t make_id(uint8_t src, uint8_t dst, uint16_t msg_id)
{
    controller_id_t cid;
    cid.id = msg_id;
    cid.dst = dst;
    cid.src = src;
    return cid.raw;
}

/**
 * Have an enumeration of controller IDs
 */
typedef enum {
    cid_geographical_controller = 5,
    cid_master_controller = 6,
} cid_t;

/**
 * Each controller can then set its own ID
 */
const cid_t our_controller_id = cid_master_controller;

int main(void)
{
    /**
     * We use magic numbers here, but each message ID (such as 0x301) should be
     * part of an enumeration that is shared between different controllers.
     */
    can_msg_t msg = { 0 };
    msg.msg_id = make_id(our_controller_id, cid_geographical_controller, 0x301);

    /**
     * Send the message to the geographical controller to subscribe to
     * GPS data to be sent at 5Hz:
     */
    msg.frame_fields.data_len = 1;
    msg.frame_fields.is_29bit = 1;
    msg.data.bytes[0] = 5;
    CAN_tx(can1, &msg, portMAX_DELAY);

    /**
     * Now, we should be able to retrieve our data from the geographical controller at 5Hz.
     * Since we may have subscribed to many messages, you will need to pCid->src of where
     * the message came from, and then also check the pCid->id to detect what message it is,
     * and then parse the data bytes into our variable types.
     */
    if (CAN_rx(can1, &msg, portMAX_DELAY)) {
        controller_id_t *pCid = &(msg.msg_id);

        /**
         * Check if we got the response from the GPS controller
         * If you subscribe to a lot of messages, you might want to put this 
         * in a large switch statement that calls functions.
         */
        if (pCid->src == cid_geographical_controller)
        {
            if (pCid->id == 0x401) /* 0x401 is a magic num, should be an enum */
            {
                float longitude = * (float*) &(msg.data.bytes[0]);
                float latitude  = * (float*) &(msg.data.bytes[4]);
            }
        }
    }

    return 0;
}

Features

The first feature to develop is the self-drive capability and everything else comes later. While some people in the team may be focusing on delivering this primary feature, other members can focus on other things such as automatic headlights, hill-hold capability etc.

Robust

Your project is one project as a whole. So if it doesn't work, do not blame it on "hey, that controller went crashed". If a controller crashes it will restart, and the subscribed messages will vanish. If subscribed messages vanish, other controllers should re-subscribe. So your code should be robust, and self-recover from any crashed event or any brief power disruptions.

Grade

Your grade is relative. The best team earns the best grade. Remember than three out of three features working 100% is far better than nine out of ten features working. Focus on less features, with highest quality.