Overview
SmartModel Car was built based on Traxxas Slash 2WD powered by brushed electric engine Titan 12T550.
On the main chassis plate an on-board computer is installed which is Nvidia Jetson Nano. It controls the car in autonomous mode based on the images received from the camera. Furthermore, additional power supply, microcontrollers and numerous sensors (distance sensors, hall sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, GPS) were installed. However they are not used in the current version of the control system.
Model was programmed to drive on a custom mini racetrack with 9 curves and total length of approx. 75 meters.
Autonomous steering system consists of two main modules:
1. track recognition model based on the images received from camera,
2. steering model based on a neural network.
Steering model was trained using reinforcement learning algorithm in AirSim simulator based on Unreal Engine 4.
Please watch a video from self-driving run.