Rust is for Robots!

1. RUST IS FOR ROBOTS Building an autonomous vehicle with Rust and the Raspberry Pi Andy Grove - Boulder/Denver Rust Meetup - 9/21/16

2. PLEASE ASK QUESTIONS!

3. ABOUT ME • Co-Founder & Chief Architect @ AgilData • Started in C++, then 20 years Java, now Scala & Rust • AgilData is building its next product in Rust • Also offering Rust consultancy and project kick-start services • I enjoy being a “Maker” in my spare time • Digital electronics, robotics, 3D printing, woodworking, etc, etc.

4. G-FORCE (ironic name)

5. WHY THIS PROJECT? • I was inspired by the last Rust meetup and I agreed to give a talk at this one • Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition (AVC) was coming up • This was a great opportunity for me to learn about using Rust on the Raspberry Pi and get to share that knowledge • And four weeks was plenty of time, right?

6. OBJECTIVES • Navigate to pre-determined waypoints (GPS co-ordinates) • Using GPS and compass to determine location and heading • Change speed of left/right motors to control movement • Avoid obstacles • Using ultra-sonic sensors to detect distance to objects • Record instrumented video • Essential for debugging

7. COMPONENTS

8. DIGITAL IO INTERFACES • GPIO - General Purpose IO • Turning pins on and off, or reading high/low inputs from pins • SPI - Serial Peripheral Interface • Four wire interface (MISO, MOSI, SCLK + dedicated SS per slave) • I2C - Inter-Integrated Circuit (pronounced I-squared-C) • Two wire interface (SDA - Serial Data & SCL - Serial Clock) • Each device has unique 7-bit address • Serial • Familiar to most of use - same as file or network i/o

9. WHY RASPBERRY PI? • Great support for Linux (Raspbian) • Designed for hacking hardware • Hardware support for GPIO, SPI, and I2C • Support for webcams and video processing (with GPU acceleration) • USB makes it easy to connect to serial devices • Built-in WiFi • All this for $35 !

10. RASPBERRY PI 3

11. WHY RUST?• Better performance than Java or scripting languages (assumption) • Safe language - nobody wants their robot to fail with a segmentation fault or null pointer exception • Crates already exist for interfacing with GPIO, SPI, I2C and Serial • Rust is natively supported on the Pi using rustup.rs • Easy to call existing C libraries such as OpenCV with zero overhead

12. SERIAL IO • Linux presents serial IO devices as files e.g. /dev/ttyUSB0 • Use udev rules to map to convenient names e.g. /dev/gps • USB-Serial adapter required to connect to serial devices • serial-rs crate makes it easy to configure baud rate, parity, etc • Use std::io::Read and std::io::Write to interact with device

13. SERIAL IO

14. PARSING GPS DATA • GPS data uses NMEA format • Simple comma-separated format • Example: $GPGLL,4916.45,N,12311.12,W,225444,A

15. SPI • SPI devices are represented as files too! • Example: /dev/spidev0.0 • Use spidev crate to interact

16. I2C • I2C devices are represented as… yes, files! • Example: /dev/i2c-1 • Use i2cdev crate

17. GPIO • GPIO devices are represented as files too, but the sysfs_gpio crate abstracts this • GPIO is the simplest interface - simply read or write 1 or 0 to an individual pin • Raspberry Pi does not support analog IO directly • Suitable for: • Interacting with digital circuits • Blinking LEDs • Not suitable for: • Driving high current devices like motors

18. CALLING C CODE USING FFI

19. OPENCV

20. AUGMENTING VIDEO

21. DEMO SPARKFUN AVC PRACTICE

22. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaBiMtyEZOs

23. WHAT WENT WRONG? • Ultrasonic sensors aren’t fantastic at detecting hay bales, especially at an oblique angle • LIDAR would have been better, but also more $$ • Magnetometer (compass) was not correctly calibrated and I also hadn’t accounted for magnetic declination (8 degrees!) • Four weeks wasn’t quite long enough for this project • But I learned a lot!

24. RUST/PI CHALLENGES • Compilation is SLOW on the Pi • Splitting project into multiple crates helps a lot • Incremental compilation will be here soon • Compilation on the Mac natively is not possible since the libraries are Linux-specific • Cross-compiling is a pain to set up, but probably worth the investment • Docker can help • Severe lack of sample code or existing libraries in Rust for any sensors, so you have to write your own (using Arduino libraries as a reference)

25. RESOURCES

26. WEB SITES • For inspiration, tutorials, blogs, parts, visit these sites: • sparkfun.com • adafruit.com • instructables.com • hackaday.com • make.com • tindie.com

27. MAKER COMMUNITY • Local maker spaces • Solid State Depot (Boulder) • The Gizmo Dojo (Broomfield) • Tinkermill (Longmont) • Mini Maker Faires • NoCo Mini Maker Faire (Loveland) - October 8/9 • Denver Mini Maker Faire - Summer 2017

28. QUESTIONS? • Source code • https://github.com/andygrove/rust-avc • Contact • Twitter: @andygrove73 • Email: andy.grove@agildata.com • Blog: http://theotherandygrove.com