2019 UMich Makeathon
Autonomous Vehicle Case Competition | February 2019

I participated in the 2019 Makeathon at the University of Michigan. I competed in the National Instruments Autonomous Vehicle Competition, where the objective was to create an autonomous vehicle capable of completing a list of objectives in 36 hours. This list includes but is not limited to: navigating "roads" that curve and have intersections, stop at the sound of "sirens", stop at a red light and drive when it turns green, and navigating a curving tunnel with low visibility. Unlike other competitors, the vehicle was completely designed and fabricated from scratch in the allotted time.

My partner and I won 1st place overall in the competition, beating 7 other teams.

Electrical:

• Arduino based processing
• Sensors include ultrasonic, microphone, color, encoders, etc.
• Powered by 2 brushed DC motors

Mechanical:

• Vehicle runs off a symmetric tank drive using two powered wheels on each side and two idle wheels in the front/back
• Motors each drive a two stage 3D printed transmission to achieve suitably low speeds with the given actuators

Software:

• Wheel velocities are controlled by PID controllers
• Autonomous navigation achieved using an underslung line following sensor and a side-to-side sweeping algorithm
• Sensor fusion was utilized to react to the various environmental obstacles and instructions

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