Discussions

Hi there,

I have been playing around with the thought of entering into the Sparkfun Autonomous Vehicle Competition for fun and to learn more about the technology involved, but had a few questions. (I have pretty good experience with arduino, raspberry pi, and a few other development platforms, as well as a few programming languages, so no worries on that side of things.)

Now, first, after poking around a bit as to what others have done in terms of land based, ArduRover pops up more than anything. While looking into it, it seems to me that the gist of setting up an autonomous rover using it is to buy the kit, install it on a platform, and use the built in software, adding sensors or modifying the code/calibration as needed. Would that be about accurate?

If that is the case, I would like to ask if it is silly to say I do not want that. With that (relative) level of ease, it sounds as if, when making the system, you do not actually learn anything about the hardware or software involved. I realize whatever I could come up with probably would be of lessor power, but spending a chunk of money and then just plugging it in seems to not teach you anything about how the GPS communicates, or how any of the other components synchronizes.

Is that overly naive to say? More importantly, would it be realistic to be able to design a simple GPS/sensor based car, with software, in the time frame (about 6 months)?

The APM modules and accompanying software look absolutely fantastic, and I applaud its development, but I can't shake the feeling that it is a bit more "plug and play" than I would like. Beyond that, I doubt I could contribute much to a platform so well implemented already, without extensive experience.

So, what do you guys think? Aspirations too high for something of this complexity, or possible? Or am I completely off in my claims about APM?

(Also, not totally sure what to classify this under, so I'm listing as Unassigned.)