Smart Models

Welcome to SmartModels!

The curiosity about the world has always accompanied man. For centuries, scientists have been trying to understand and explain complex phenomena occurring in the world around us. They formulate theories, conduct experiments and build models with which they can describe (model) and analyze a given aspect of reality in a simplified way.

Nowadays development of modern science and technology is dominated by digital technologies that enter new areas of our lives. Every day algorithms analyze a large amounts of data which directly or indirectly shape people’s behavior or decisions. Increasingly, these solutions are based on machine learning algorithms or the so-called Artificial Intelligence.

SmartModels was created as a result of passion for modeling, programming and the willingness to put machine learning algorithms into practice.

I would like to present a small self-driving car built based on electric RC Car. I hope the topic will interest someone and become an inspiration. At the same time, I am open to new ideas and exchange of experience.

About

I have been interested in programming, data analysis and broadly understood modeling for many years and I follow a development of technology and machine learning algorithms with a great interest.

One of the very interesting areas is the self-driving cars development. Big automotive and technology companies have long been researching in that filed and every year bring better and more advanced driver-assistance systems.

As it turns out, on the Internet you can find a lot of interesting projects and attempts to use small models of electric cars to learn / develop autonomous control systems. The widely available RC car models (radio / remote control) are perfect for this purpose. These are small-sized (usually 1/10 scale) electric cars that are remotely controlled by radio waves. Their construction faithfully reproduces the full-size models and the performance can surprise with top speeds exceeding 50 km / h.

I became interested in the idea of building a small self-driving car because the vision of the project that combines elements of electronics, mechanics, modeling, machine learning and programming fits my interests perfectly. Of course, the question immediately arose what would such a car be used for and where could it be driven? It was then that the idea of creating a self-driving model that could drive on a mini racetrack was born.

Although the idea seemed to be a quite abstract at the same time it was very fascinating and that’s why I decided to take it up.

After many months of programming, experimenting and solving numerous problems, I managed to achieve my goal – collision-free and fully autonomous run on the mini racetrack. Of course, this is not a final version yet, but I thought that this is a good moment to present my project and create SmartModels.

Vision

SmartModels was created to present the results of applying machine learning algorithms in practice.

A small self-driving car running on the mini racetrack is the first project but the area is quite wide and complex and there is still room for improvements.

The project can be developed in many directions, but one of the most interesting seems to be adding a second self-driving car and run it on the track simultaneously. Going further, races of such mini autonomous models could be organized in the future.

Another very interesting project would be to apply machine learning algorithms to control drones. The idea is not new, but creating a custom control system would be a great challenge and a source of new experiences.

This is only a small part of the ideas that could be implemented but unfortunately my free time is limited. Nevertheless, I will try to keep developing SmartModels.

Contact

If you are interested in my project, have any questions or ideas, please contact me.

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