Engineering Portfolio: Chris Berthelet
Autonomous Line Following Racecar (NATCAR Competition)
Description
The purpose of this project was to transform a 1/10th scale RC car chassis into an autonomous racecar that follows a white tape track. The car was designed to compete in the 2017 NATCAR competition at UC Davis (http://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/natcar/).
This mechatronics system is composed of TSL1401CL Line Scan Cameras, a BLDC motor with hall effect sensors, a servo motor, custom PCBA's, a FRDM K64F microcontroller, and custom mechanical hardware. Our car won 1st place for the in-class race as well as 3rd place in the NATCAR competition.
Gallery
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Personal Contribution
My main project contributions included:
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Prototyping of BLDC motor drive circuit
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Algorithm and tuning to control exposure time for line scan camera
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Design of microcontroller shield PCBA
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Design of mechanical hardware
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Programming of velocity and steering control algorithms
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Code timing, integration, and testing
Technical Development
The technical skills that I developed included:
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Programming in C++
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PCBA design in EAGLE
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CAD in SolidWorks
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Embedded systems (mbed Library)
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Sensor/actuator characterization and integration
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Electronics bench testing
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Perf-board and PCBA soldering
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Prototyping via 3D printing