My 2018 Path to Learning.

You can find me on Twitter @bhutanisanyam1


Here is the Part 1, go check it out to know what has been going on in my Garage!

Term 1 Cohort of my Self Driving Car Nanodegree classroom starts on the 19th, meanwhile I have started working on things in my Garage that I want to share:

2 Weeks in:

As Promised, I would add posts to the series regularly

Here is some news:
I have decided to make a Mini Self Driving Car to apply what I will learn in my Self Driving Car Nanodegree Program:

  • The Setup: The Model 1 (Name TBD-Please help me pick a name in the comments below!) will be Raspberry Pi 3 based + RC Car setup.
  • Reason: Raspberry Pi 3 although has less horsepower (pun intended) to run all the Image Processing and detection tasks is a good place to test my skills as a primer and certainly later, I will apply the same to a Nvidia Jetson TX-2 (Or 1). The secondary reason being, I don’t own a Jetson and I will apply for Student aid options later.
Model 1 Chasis: The Chasis is 10 years old!
  • Progress: 
    1. I’ve found a RC Toy Car (from my childhood), that will function as the main chassis.
    2. Setup RPI3 board: I’ve installed Ubuntu Mate on the Raspberry Pi Board, configured ROS and OpenCV on it. 
    3. Setup the PiBoard for Remote Logins and running scripts on boot: which is essential, since in the field my Model 1 car should be able to boot up and drive right away!
Ubuntu Mate Setup

I have also taken the courage to set 5 bold targets before my Term 1 starts (Roughly a week from now):

  • Complete 2 Projects before the Term’s opening:
    I will attempt to make a crude solution to the Lane Detection & Sign Classification Projects, before the Nanodegree opens! (The Project Repositories are hosted on GitHub and I will attempt to solve it using knowledge and hints provided via them). Later, I’ll share a proper review once the Projects ‘Meet specifications’-which is Udacity’s codeword for saying Project Complete!
  • Deploy Lane Detection on Model 1 Mini SDC (Guys, please help me pick a name, this doesn’t sound cool at all). Since the Lane Detection pipeline is OpenCV based, I’ll test on the RPI board using the Pi Camera.
Pi Cam 2

Long Term functionality Goals for My Mini Self Driving Car:

  • Path (lane) following
  • Crash Avoidance
  • Object Detection
  • Symbol Detection
  • Bonus points: A drift mode!

Please note that these aren’t the Pre-requistes, rather are my own personal ventures to my Self Driving Year.

I will share detailed posts of the targets that I have completed.

Stay Tuned for updates! I will keep sharing my story, if I make it to the finish line with my Goals or hit the dust!

These series will also be a public accountability of how I have been working on my Journey and hence the title for the series ‘A Self Driving Year’
You can find me on twitter @bhutanisanyam1
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