Autonomous Race Car

The objective of this project was to design and build an autonomous line-following race car for the class EE192: Mechatronics Design Laboratory at UC Berkeley.

Each team was given a 4WD RC car base, which included the chassis, drivetrain (wheels, driveshaft, differential, steering servo), LiPO battery, and choice of DC motor (brushed or brushless). Teams were also provided with a suite of sensors including encoders and a line-scanning camera, as well as a programmable microcontroller.

All mechanical structures, circuitry, and software were designed and manufactured by the teams. See the slides below for project details.

My primary contribution to the project was the design of the motor driver and power conditioning circuit board. This board included circuitry for voltage regulation of the 7.4V battery to provide a 5V power supply for the microcontroller and sensors, an H-bridge motor driver, and emergency cutoff switch. In addition, I worked with the team on designing the high-level control logic for line-following, as well as the software drivers for the rotational encoder and line-scanning camera.