Autonomous racing car competition for mechatronics engineering education

Abstract

A robot competition is described which overcomes many inherent limitations of existing competitions. The proposed “CARbot” (Computer-aided Autonomous Racing robot) competition requires students to build and program their own sensor-guided electric-powered racing cars and race these vehicles against each other on a standard closed-loop flat track. The design and manufacture of the “official” racetrack is described briefly as well as the basic design and control specifications for a fully functional “CARbot”. Students will be able to develop useful skills relating to low-level microcontroller programming, high-level PC programming and interfacing, basic PCB manufacture and design, serial communications and protocol programming, sensor interfacing, signal conditioning, hardware debugging and feedback control programming, while they work towards building an operational vehicle to race in an end-of-semester competition