Racing Working Group Meeting 2024/09/12

[pojenwang]

Administrative

Previous Meeting Minutes

Attendees

• Po-Jen Wang (AWF)
• Mitsudome-san (Tier.IV)
• David Walmroth (Open AD Kit / Pix-Moving)
• Atanasko

Minutes: Po-Jen Wang

Topics

AV4EV Gokart Update

• Previously we developed the AV4EV_Sim (based on SodaSim) and built the digital twin of the Purdue Grand Prix racetrack at Purdue University for the preparation of the AKS competition
• Racetrack in real life
• At the time It was mainly used for testing algorithms developed for the Reactive Category (map not allowed) of the AKS competition. We don't have a racetrack in real life to test.
• Demo video of grass detection and smart gap follow
• There's also the Open Category of the race at AKS competition (map is allowed) and the team used GNSS and pure-pursuit controller to complete the track. At the time it was all tested on the real vehicle
• After the competition we decided to work on extending the usage of our simulator
  -- Test our Open Category race algorithms
  -- Run Autoware planning pipeline
  -- Test other controllers in the simulator
• We've successfully integrated and run our pure-pursuit controller and waypoints inside the simulator
• Demo video of running pure-pursuit with slightly edited waypoints
• We tried using the waypoints collected at the competition, this is an optimized trajectory that can cut close to the track boundary during turns. In the simulator, due to errors these waypoints can cut too close and cause the go-kart to collide with the cones
• The waypoints need to be manually adjusted or recollected to complete the track
• We also noticed the controller parameters from the competition can not be directly used in the simulator because the steering angle output to the wheel angle is not a linear mapping on the real car.
• The controller parameters need to be tuned in the simulator
• Demo video of running MPC using the same waypoints
  -- A lot smoother control compared to pure-pursuit
• We are also working on getting Autoware to run in the Sim
  -- Simulator doesn't publish TF topic which is required by SLAM. This is being added to the simulator. The cones also seem to be quite small and do not provide a lot of features for localization.
  -- Link to AV4EV gokart repo: https://github.com/mlab-upenn/gokart-autoware.universe/

Other topics:

• AWF Work Group overview: https://autoware.org/join-a-work-group/