Big rover robot platform – Part 2 – Better Control

Brushed DC motors are inherently hard to control accurately compared to modern BLDCs, especially at low speeds. Outline of what we will do: Linearize the output voltage of our H-Bridge Create an open-loop speed controller Add a closed loop speed controller on top Linearize H-Bridge Output Voltage A prerequisite to predictable motor behaviour is a…

Big rover robot platform – Part 1

Those little Arduino robot-car kits are neat and all, but sometimes something that provides a bit more space for electronics, something that has a little more OMPH just sounds like much more fun! So let’s build a box! With wheels and motors and all, obviously. Let’s call it a rover. Here is the wishlist for…

DIY Self-Driving Car – Collecting Data – What do we need?

To train a driving model, we need driving data. Let’s break down what exactly we’re interested in. A fundamental requirement: We don’t want to do any manual labeling. We will need at least a couple hours of driving, which means 100.000s of frames recorded. We can’t possibly label those by hand within the scope of…

DIY Self-Driving Car – Hardware build log

We want our camera-based system to run on an nVidia Jetson Nano, display a GUI on a monitor and talk to the car via a CAN-USB-interface. It should know its GPS position and be able to turn the steering wheel using a stepper motor. Guess what my car is missing? All of that. Let’s add…