Team 2 ECE/MAE 148 Final Report

👋 The Team: 2 Fast 2 Furious

(Left to Right)

• Elias Fang (CSE)
• Ainesh Arumugam (ECE)
• Matthew Merioles (ECE)
• Junhao "Michael" Chen (MAE)

📝 Project Overview

Mario Kart in real-life? That's basically what we did. We designed a boost system similar to those in Mario Kart, where detecting colored pieces of paper on the track can change throttle for a short period of time. Depending on the color of the "pad" the car drives over, it will either speed up, slow down, or stop for a few seconds, just like in the game!

🏎 Our Robot

Bird's Eye

Front

Left

Right

Back

Schematic

🍄 Final Project

What We Promised

Must haves

[X] Distinguishing different colors through the camera

[X] Adjust the throttle based on the color

Nice to haves

[X] Have the car detect a flat piece of paper on the track (like a booster pad)

[ ] Combine with lane-following algorithm

Gantt Chart

https://sharing.clickup.com/9010060626/g/h/8cgn7aj-87/769d44f22562beb

What We Accomplished

Color Detection

• Used OpenCV for color detection and edge tracing
• Used color mask algorithm to detect proportion of frame that color takes up
• Detected multiple colors at the same time
• Determined HSVs for orange, pink, and blue

Demo

PyVESC

• Connection through external webcam
• Different RPM values are sent through PyVesc to achieve different speed for different colors marked by different states:
  • Blue (Boost) = speed up for 3 sec
  • Pink (Slow)= slow down for 3 sec
  • Orange (Stop) = stop for 3 sec
  • Neutral (Normal) = constant rpm

Blue Demo

Pink Demo

Orange Demo

Presentation

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1oJPRLYIKvHUXEIK9hoYpPFoFAyHuG6sE7ZrU9NQPG8g/edit?usp=sharing

Code

https://github.com/UCSD-ECEMAE-148/winter-2023-final-project-team-2/blob/main/MarioKart.py

Possible Future Work

• Change the colored paper into Mario Kart items (mushroom, bananas, etc.) for the car to identify
• Allow the car to run autonomously on a track and still apply speed changes
• Race with other teams 😉

🏁 Autonomous Laps

DonkeyCar

ROS2 Line Following

ROS2 Lanes

[GNSS](Unable to complete due to external factors...)

Additional Work Done

• Our team was tasked with implementing a depth feature with our contour function, using depthAI to integrate with the OAK-D Camera!
• Our updated code is now able to measure how far the contoured object is, measured in cm!

[Depth Demo] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYIz7--TpgY [Updated Code] https://github.com/UCSD-ECEMAE-148/winter-2023-final-project-team-2/blob/main/MarioKart_depth.py

Acknowledgements

Thanks for Professor Jack Silberman, TA Kishore Nukala, and TA Moises Lopez!