What DIY Drones were a half-decade ago, DIY autonomous cars are now. I'm part of the Self Racing Cars group in the SF Bay Area, who are building and racing autonomous vehicles from 1/10th scale to go-karts to full-size cars (Ford Fusion is the go-to vehicle, since it's the cheapest car that's fully drive-by-wire and can easily be made autonomous).
Above is the autonomous go-kart that Autodesk CEO Carl Bass and I built, with autonomy provide by a Pixhawk and the APM:Rover code, plus custom computer vision processing on a RaspberryPi. (The gorilla is for ballast -- and looks)
If you're in the Bay Area, you can join the Meetup group here. First hackathon/meetup is on Oct 30 in Berkeley.
Comments
Let me in.
I develop my first autonomous boat and first autonomous model car.
I test 3D vision system based on deapth maps, deapth layers and basic obstacle avoidance ( based on Kinect, twin camera smartphone or 2 generic webcams.
Since personal drone markets are fully saturated and overregulated by FAA and other respective national agencies, great future is open to developers of autonomous model cars, not regulated by FAA or other agencies yet.
If you are aware of any computer vision, deapth maps - based system, which can be scripted and modified to meet local needs, please let me know.
2 70kg cargo inflantable jet skis coming with electric thruster ( Sea-Doo model modified into autonomous boats)
undergo testing today.
Pro-tip: The cart will handle better with the batteries where the seat is.
@Mike: From Pololu
Nice! Where did you get that steering servo?
Be sure to give us a demo.
Hi Chris,
Where does Traxxas XMAXX fit in your classes?
Sounds like a great group.
Best,
Gary