Another Day in The Field

On Sunday we tested a new trajectory follower which is based on a value-function. The pose estimator was tested integrating all sensors including GPS, IMU, and car odametery.
The video production team is working on a promotion video of little ben performing an autonomous run which will display our GUI to the brains of the car.

Driving by the RNDF

Jim, Alex K., Heeten and I went to the Boeing lot with the Prius for
the first time on Sunday. Our objective was mainly to get acquainted
with the site, but we also took the opportunity to do some more
testing of the trajectory-following code and a simple RNDF. We
enabled the
trajectory follower's throttle control for the first time, since we weren't
willing to risk it in the smaller lot. Everything was pretty successful,
though the controller gains still need a lot of tuning. We were able
to follow some pretty interesting trajectories, including one based on
an RNDF we also built for the site.

Ben Drives Himself!

This afternoon/evening we took Ben out to the small road behind the USPS parking lots and managed to fix the few remaining issues with drivers and we successfully demonstrated trajectory following with Ben, following (steering control only due to the confined space) straight and curved trajectories previously driven by Tully and recorded/played back via Sheep. Attached is the proof - the results were very encouraging the performance in terms of tracking is really quite good considering that there is still a reasonably significant amount of noise in the pose estimate which affects both the recording of the trajectory and the following (we are still occasionally bermuda triangulated to somewhere in manhattan momentarily). What is also impressive is that the controller that we tested is unchanged from the version that gives near equivalent performance in simulation - no gains were modified.

Alex

Robot Vehicle Driving Test

Little Ben - The Ben Franklin Racing Team vehicle, performing a autonomous control over the vehicle and follows a path demonstrated by an human driver. First, the path demonstrated by manual driving is recorded. In the following section Little Ben is generating steering and throttle commands based on its perceived location and heading as given by the GPS locator.