how I learned about self driving cars

1. Self Driving Cars
The little ones

2. Agenda
• Why - Self Driving Cars ?
• How - High Level Architecture of Self Driving Cars
• What - Learning by Doing by Extending Toy RC Cars
• DonkeyCar
• Behavioral Cloning
• RACECARX
• ROS
• Wall Follower
@MarkBroerkens

3. https://extranet.who.int/roadsafety/death-on-the-roads/
@MarkBroerkens
17.08.2020

4. https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/stau-hauptstadt-berlin-geniesst-den-stau-doch-einfach/23977006.html @MarkBroerkens

5. https://medium.com/udacity/how-self-driving-cars-work-f77c49dca47e @MarkBroerkens
How Self Driving Cars Work
- High Level Architecture -

6. Learning
How Self
Driving Cars
Work
• Online Courses are nice, but working with
real cars is more fun
• Real cars are too expensive for makers
• Start with simulations and toys
(especially if you have kids)
• Find a group of co-learners
• You don‘t need to be TESLA in order to
create value from self driving vehicles
@MarkBroerkens

7. @MarkBroerkens
Line Follower – 1
(see with two LEDs)

8. The big version: Line Follower
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:IntelliCart1.jpg
@MarkBroerkens

9. Find Lines with Classical Computer Vision
(see with camera, from Udacity Self Driving Cars Nanodegree)
@MarkBroerkens

10. greyscale
smoothing edge detection
region of interest Find lines
Lanelinefinder
@MarkBroerkens

11. Limitations
• Straight lines only
• No curves
• Sensitive to shadows
• Requires additional steps for path planning
@MarkBroerkens

12. See with camera and follow track
@MarkBroerkens

13. https://www.donkeycar.com
@MarkBroerkens
Camera
RC Car
Raspberry Pi PWM Driver
Electronic Speed Controller
Steering Servo

14. Control Car E2E by AI -
Behavior Cloning
• Human driver drives car around the track
• Car records
• images (inputs)
• steering and throttle commands from human driver
(label)
• AI is trained on images as input and steering angle
and throttle as labels
• Car predicts the steering angle and throttle
@MarkBroerkens

15. Collect labeled data from DonkeyCar
@MarkBroerkens
{
„user/throttle“: 0.3,
„user/angle“: 0.09504
}

16. Goal – follow track
@MarkBroerkens

17. RACECAR/X
get closer to real car
@MarkBroerkens

18. Stereo-Camera
Lidar
IMU
Jetson Xavier
Electronic Speed Controller
WIFI
@MarkBroerkens

19. Stereo-Camera
Lidar
IMU
Jetson Xavier
Electronic Speed Controller
@MarkBroerkens
Docker
Robot Operating System

20. Wall Follower
@MarkBroerkens

21. Wall - Follower

22. Lessons
Learned
• It‘s fun
• We can already leverage existing
technologies for business. E.g.
• Manufacturing: Drive cars
autonomously from end of
production line to parking lot
(Kopernikus Automotive)
• Insurance: analyze driving
behaviour and provide ranking
for insurances (peregrine
technologies)
• Manufacturing / AGVs

23. MHP Whitepapers
• Autonomous Drinving Whitepaper by MHP.
https://www.mhp.com/fileadmin/www.mhp.com/assets/pdf/MHP_Autonomous_Driving_EN_2019.pdf
• Future of Logistics by MHP
https://www.mhp.com/fileadmin/www.mhp.com/assets/pdf/MHPWhitepaper-Logistics_EN.pdf

24. About Me
• Mark Brörkens
• https://twitter.com/markbroerkens
• https://de.linkedin.com/in/markbroerkens
• https://github.com/MarkBroerkens/RACECARX