
Adventures Building a Self-Driving RC Car - rahulrav
http://rahulrav.com/blog/self_driving_radio_controlled_cars.html
======
diyrobocars
If anyone here is interested, check out
[https://diyrobocars.com](https://diyrobocars.com) or
[https://diyrobocars.com.au](https://diyrobocars.com.au) in Australia. I
organise the DIY Robocars events in Australia (and we are looking for a
sponsor). I'd also recommend joining the Donkeycar and DIY Robocars Slack
groups which is where most of the discussion happens in between events.

~~~
keyle
I got really excited but then the site was a bit of a let down... forms to
fill, missing guide... meetup last October...

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kregasaurusrex
The Jetson Nano provides a very fair amount of computing power for AI
applications like this- I've been following JetsonHacks[0] for a while and
there's some neat projects posted on the site. The site owner's Youtube
channel[1] also goes into detail on interoperability across the TX series such
as cameras, code libraries, and assembling a car based on MIT's open-sourced
Racecar[2] built with a TX2.

[0] [https://www.jetsonhacks.com/2019/03/25/nvidia-jetson-nano-
de...](https://www.jetsonhacks.com/2019/03/25/nvidia-jetson-nano-developer-
kit/)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQs0lwV6E4p7LQaGJ6fgy5Q](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQs0lwV6E4p7LQaGJ6fgy5Q)

[2] [https://racecar.mit.edu/platform](https://racecar.mit.edu/platform)

~~~
rahulrav
JetsonHacks is pretty great.

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LukaD
Your page can't be scrolled with the keyboard and it's missing the native
scrollbar. You should remove those overflow rules from the body and .content
div.

~~~
rahulrav
Apologies. This is a new blog I am working on. Will fix it.

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aresant
If you have even a peripheral interest and are in the Bay Area come to the
meetup / race referenced - all are welcome!

It’s surprisingly fun and they serve an awesome BBQ lunch - both me and my 7
year old son enjoyed the program immensely -

[https://www.meetup.com/DIYRobocars/](https://www.meetup.com/DIYRobocars/)

~~~
mcshicks
We also have a fun one in San Diego. You can find your local one here (or how
to start your own!)

[https://diyrobocars.com/local-meetup-groups/](https://diyrobocars.com/local-
meetup-groups/)

~~~
NikolaeVarius
Looks like NYC one might be dead?

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cheeko1234
Related:

[https://github.com/markku-ai/donkey-vis](https://github.com/markku-ai/donkey-
vis)

Donkeycar neural network model visualization built to "see" how the AI sees.

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Tepix
Donkeycar is a fantastic project and it got a whole lot better with the recent
release of Donkeycar 3.0.

Keep it up guys!

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thowthisaway
That freaking awesome! I was thinking about making a self driving RC car with
image recognition to hunt down some rabbits in my yard, maybe you can help me
with that!

Great job man, great job!

~~~
ModernMech
I've been thinking about the same thing but for deer. They keep eating my
bushes in the middle of the night, so I'd like a little patrol car to chase
them away.

~~~
paisleyrob
My mother has found the a motion detector water sprayer works great for this
application. Deer comes by and they're sprayed with water.

It looks a lot like this one: [https://www.amazon.com/Hoont-Blaster-Repellent-
Activated-Spr...](https://www.amazon.com/Hoont-Blaster-Repellent-Activated-
Sprinkler/dp/B078R6PRZ6)

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hoytech
Not to be that guy, but is it still an "RC" car if it's self-driving? :)

~~~
gist
I will take the 'that guy' crown from you. I am thinking what is self driving
if the video shows it going off the track and not slowing down for the curves.
This reminds me of back in the day with slotted race cars that if you didn't
pay attention they flew off the track.

This is not to say that it's not admirable but I was not as impressed as I
think I should be when someone is doing self driving.

~~~
rahulrav
The rules of the race are that you can't cut corners from inside the track.
Going out of the track is a natural penalty, so it's allowed. The car actually
slows down a bit.

The ML algorithm being used is called behavioral cloning (and it's cloning
me). It's just that I am a pretty rusty RC car driver :)

~~~
Someone
_”Going out of the track is a natural penalty”_

No, it isn’t. If the track is concave, driving the convex closure of the track
shortens the distance travelled, decreases the amount of turning to do, and no
corner will become tighter. That must mean the convex closure is faster to
ride.

I guess that’s why the red cones are there. Passing them on the wrong side
must lead to a steep time penalty or immediate disqualification.

Also, I would think that, in a really tight turn, you would have to slow down
so much to stay on the track that overshooting the turn without braking as
much is faster (I think the video shows that in the last corner of the round,
at the right edge of the video)

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typon
This is ethical application of AI I can get behind

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m3at
Cool project! Thanks for sharing

Two questions to know a bit more:

\- how long did it take you to complete that project?

\- what is the rough total cost?

~~~
rahulrav
My first car took about a week. The second one took a day. The total BOM was
around 400$.

Note: I am not great with hardware.

~~~
singularity2001
What took you so long the first time or: did you reuse compiled code the
second time?

~~~
rahulrav
The first time I was building Donkey for an entirely new (and previously
unsupported) SBC - the Asus Tinkerboard S. I was also unfamiliar with how
everything was put together.

The second time was a breeze. Jetson Nano runs Ubuntu so getting everything to
work was relatively easy.

~~~
m3at
Good to know, thanks for answering!

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transistor-man
Awesome project! Are there build details about getting everything running on
the Nano? Do you have a block diagram or interconnect schematic that you could
post? Thanks!

~~~
rahulrav
Yes. Join the Slack channel. We can help you out if you have questions.

------
agumonkey
Tiny self driving vehicles could be fun and safe way to transport small
things. Think an army of cleaning drones gatherings trash to a collection
point.

~~~
joncrane
So a roomba?

~~~
ModernMech
More like Wall-E

------
parentheses
You mentioned

> Having read some amazing books on machine learning ...

Which books did you read and what was your experience with them?

~~~
rahulrav
The ones I really enjoyed reading were:

[https://www.pyimagesearch.com/deep-learning-computer-
vision-...](https://www.pyimagesearch.com/deep-learning-computer-vision-
python-book/)

[https://www.machinelearningisfun.com/](https://www.machinelearningisfun.com/)

and

[https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Learning-Python-Francois-
Chollet...](https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Learning-Python-Francois-
Chollet/dp/1617294438)

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Indronil
my one can be found here its simple and still a work in progress
[https://github.com/aetar](https://github.com/aetar) will try to implement
yolo3 later project name road trip

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NetOpWibby
Watch Dogs 2

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jonas_kgomo
George Hotz, former apple device jail-breaker left Tesla to start working on
Self-Driving Cars, the DIY approach. So far he has been training the cars with
HD Maps and has had decent progress considering his competition.
[http://comma.ai](http://comma.ai)

~~~
zyang
That's a lot of mis-information. Hotz exchanged some tweets with Musk but
never worked for Tsla. Comma uses cameras, not HD maps.

