SparkFun just announced next year's Autonomous Vehicle Competition, an autonomous race around their building in Boulder, Colorado. The 2012 event will be held on Saturday, June 16 (later in the year than the last few times, to avoid inclement weather).

As in previous years, there will be two…

First off, a big thank you to the hardware and software developers of the APM autopilot. Without it I wouldn't have been able to pull off a working autonomous system in such a short time. Thanks as well to Jack Dunkle for helping me out with a late encoder addition.

A couple months ago I saw the SparkFun AVC announcements and decided to enter. I bought parts early, but didn't get it all working right until…