LAB 1 – INTRO

The Elcano Project is developing low-cost hardware and software kits to convert any vehicle to self-drive. We are concentrating on recumbent tricycles, since that produces a real people mover at a total cost of under $5000. Our kits could also be used in full-sized cars or toy RC cars.

• C2 – Dual control: low level vehicle control, either from the driver or the AI.
• C3 – Pilot: Detects obstacles and feeds settings for the next path segment to C2.
• C4 – Path Planner: Computes the best route from current location to destination.
• C5 – Obstacle detection from sonars.

Note that the connections document is partly obsolete. The hand-wired boards have been replaced by printed circuit boards (PCB). The C1 processor no longer exists, and the 6thphoto is obsolete. The front panel in the 7th photo is not currently used. The table of LED connections is obsolete, as are C1 and the 10th photo.

Elcano Circuit Boards. Left: MegaShieldTrio; Center: Sonar Mount; Right: MegaShieldDB

ARDUINO

Elcano software is built on the open source Arduino platform, using an Atmel AVR. All software is written in C/C++.

Arduino 101

If you are not familiar with Arduino, download the cross-compiler and experiment with some of the example programs.