buggy project

This is a Group Project and it is offered jointly by the department of Electronics and Communication Engineering and the department of Computer Science Engineering to the IInd year students of all branch.

The aim of this project is to create an autonomous vehicle that is under wireless supervisory control from a remote station (see Fig 1) and safely coexists with other trams. In effect, each group is required to design and implement a micro-simulation of the Lucas light rail system.

The project will introduce you to the challenge of electronic systems design & integration. The project is an example of ‘hardware and software co-design’ and the scale of the task is such that it will require teamwork as a co-ordinated effort. The vehicle (from now on called the “Buggy”) must meet a number of progressive design challenges:

Bronze challenge

Single buggy capable of following main track twice in a clockwise direction under full supervisory control and obeying the “Rules” of the track.

Buggy must be capable of detecting an obstacle whilst following the track, coming to a temporary halt if it does. It proceeds automatically when the obstacle is removed. The buggy must safely park in the parking bay after the two loops. No external end-user manual control input is permitted once the initial start is signalled.

Messages transmitted to control your buggy, and messages received from the buggy must be displayed onscreen for debug purposes. You must also display onscreen the state of the track and buggy at each gantry STOP.

Silver challenge

The first buggy out of the parking lane goes in a clockwise direction until it reaches gantry 3. The second buggy then goes in an anticlockwise direction once around track and parks.

The first buggy then completes the loop and parks safely. Either buggy must be capable of detecting an obstacle and temporarily halting until the obstacle is removed.

Gold challenge

The Gold challenge is the same as the Silver Challenge but at the start the Supervisor PC must ask the end-user how many loops of the track the two buggies should perform before parking safely.