Evolving a rule system controller for automatic driving in a car racing competition

IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Games. Perth, Australia, 15-18 December 2008.The techniques and the technologies supporting Automatic Vehicle Guidance are important issues. Automobile manufacturers view automatic driving as a very interesting product with motivating key features which allow improvement of the car safety, reduction in emission or fuel consumption or optimization of driver comfort during long journeys. Car racing is an active research field where new advances in aerodynamics, consumption and engine power are critical each season. Our proposal is to research how evolutionary computation techniques can help in this field. For this work we have designed an automatic controller that learns rules with a genetic algorithm. This paper is a report of the results obtained by this controller during the car racing competition held in Hong Kong during the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2008).Publicad

Model car for the F1/10 autonomous car racing competition

Tato diplomová práce se zabývá konstrukcí autonomního závodního modelu auta. Cílem bylo účastnit se soutěže F1/10. Práce se zabývá mnoha aspekty konstrukce od mechanického návrhu, přípravy elektroniky až po softwarovou architekturu a algoritmy. Software auta je založen na robotickém operačním systému (ROS), který je stručně představen v práci a je zhodnocena vhodnost některých jeho komponent pro auto. Konečná softwarová architektura je navržena a vyhodnocena v experimentech s reálným autem. Výsledkem je funkční model autíčka schopný samostatného průjezdu předem stanovenými kontrolními body. Určitým omezením návrhu je zastavování na kontrolních bodech.This thesis deals with construction of an autonomous race model car. The goal was to participate in F1/10 competition. The thesis covers many aspects of car construction from mechanical design, electronics preparation to software architecture and algorithms. Car software is based on the Robot Operating System (ROS), which is briefly introduced in the thesis and fitness of several of its components for the car is evaluated. The final software architecture is proposed and evaluated in real-world experiments. The result is working model car capable of autonomous passage through predefined checkpoints. Its limitation is stopping at the checkpoints

Proceedings of the 4th field robot event 2006, Stuttgart/Hohenheim, Germany, 23-24th June 2006

Zeer uitgebreid verslag van het 4e Fieldrobotevent, dat gehouden werd op 23 en 24 juni 2006 in Stuttgart/Hohenhei

Hybrid control for low-regular nonlinear systems: application to an embedded control for an electric vehicle

This note presents an embedded automatic control strategy for a low consumption vehicle equipped with an "on/off" engine. The main difficulties are the hybrid nature of the dynamics, the non smoothness of the dynamics of each mode, the uncertain environment, the fast changing dynamics, and low cost/ low consumption constraints for the control device. Human drivers of such vehicles frequently use an oscillating strategy, letting the velocity evolve between fixed lower and upper bounds. We present a general justification of this very simple and efficient strategy, that happens to be optimal for autonomous dynamics, robust and easily adaptable for real-time control strategy. Effective implementation in a competition prototype involved in low-consumption races shows that automatic velocity control achieves performances comparable with the results of trained human drivers. Major advantages of automatic control are improved robustness and safety. The total average power consumption for the control device is less than 10 mW