/CarND-MPC-Project

CarND Term 2 Model Predictive Control (MPC) Project

Primary LanguageC++MIT LicenseMIT

The Model

Student describes their model in detail. This includes the state, actuators and update equations.

  • The state of vehicle is composed of x and y coordinates, orientation (psi), speed (v).

  • The actuator of vechicle is composed of delta (Steering angle) and a (acceleration).

  • The updat equatiion:

    x1 = x0 + v0 * cos(psi0) * dt
    y1 = y0 + v0 * sin(psi0) * dt
    psi1 = psi0 + (v0/Lf) * delta0 * dt
    v1 = v0 + a0 * dt

Timestep Length and Elapsed Duration (N & dt)

Student discusses the reasoning behind the chosen N (timestep length) and dt (elapsed duration between timesteps) values. Additionally the student details the previous values tried.

The total timestep length (N * dt) should be useful to adjust steering angle. The two-second rule, which a driver may maintain a safe trailing distance at any speed, is used to set total timestep length. The number of points is proportional to computing resource. N(100) and dt (0.1) make the car off the track directly, because 10 seconds is too long for one time steering wheel adjustion. N(20) and dt (0.05) can works but it take many computing resources. Finally I use N(20) and dt(0.1) basd on my computer configuration.

Polynomial Fitting and MPC Preprocessing

The polynomial coefficients are calculated by comparing the planed waypoints and predicted trajectory using a 3 orders polynomial fitting. After that, the polynomial coefficients are used to calculate cross-track error, which used by the solver to create optimal values of actuator (steering angle).

Model Predictive Control with Latency

The student implements Model Predictive Control that handles a 100 millisecond latency. Student provides details on how they deal with latency.

The actuator (steering angle) take effect after the latency (100ms), therefore I only use the predictied trajectory after 100ms to Polynomial Fitting and MPC Preprocessing. In my codes, N = 20 and a dt = 0.1 and having a latency of 100 ms, that means that the predictied trajectory after 100ms is the second value in vector vars (value at index 1) wich corresponds to the predicted value.

CarND-Controls-MPC

Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree Program


Dependencies

Basic Build Instructions

  1. Clone this repo.
  2. Make a build directory: mkdir build && cd build
  3. Compile: cmake .. && make
  4. Run it: ./mpc.

Tips

  1. It's recommended to test the MPC on basic examples to see if your implementation behaves as desired. One possible example is the vehicle starting offset of a straight line (reference). If the MPC implementation is correct, after some number of timesteps (not too many) it should find and track the reference line.
  2. The lake_track_waypoints.csv file has the waypoints of the lake track. You could use this to fit polynomials and points and see of how well your model tracks curve. NOTE: This file might be not completely in sync with the simulator so your solution should NOT depend on it.
  3. For visualization this C++ matplotlib wrapper could be helpful.)
  4. Tips for setting up your environment are available here
  5. VM Latency: Some students have reported differences in behavior using VM's ostensibly a result of latency. Please let us know if issues arise as a result of a VM environment.

Editor Settings

We've purposefully kept editor configuration files out of this repo in order to keep it as simple and environment agnostic as possible. However, we recommend using the following settings:

  • indent using spaces
  • set tab width to 2 spaces (keeps the matrices in source code aligned)

Code Style

Please (do your best to) stick to Google's C++ style guide.

Project Instructions and Rubric

Note: regardless of the changes you make, your project must be buildable using cmake and make!

More information is only accessible by people who are already enrolled in Term 2 of CarND. If you are enrolled, see the project page for instructions and the project rubric.

Hints!

  • You don't have to follow this directory structure, but if you do, your work will span all of the .cpp files here. Keep an eye out for TODOs.

Call for IDE Profiles Pull Requests

Help your fellow students!

We decided to create Makefiles with cmake to keep this project as platform agnostic as possible. Similarly, we omitted IDE profiles in order to we ensure that students don't feel pressured to use one IDE or another.

However! I'd love to help people get up and running with their IDEs of choice. If you've created a profile for an IDE that you think other students would appreciate, we'd love to have you add the requisite profile files and instructions to ide_profiles/. For example if you wanted to add a VS Code profile, you'd add:

  • /ide_profiles/vscode/.vscode
  • /ide_profiles/vscode/README.md

The README should explain what the profile does, how to take advantage of it, and how to install it.

Frankly, I've never been involved in a project with multiple IDE profiles before. I believe the best way to handle this would be to keep them out of the repo root to avoid clutter. My expectation is that most profiles will include instructions to copy files to a new location to get picked up by the IDE, but that's just a guess.

One last note here: regardless of the IDE used, every submitted project must still be compilable with cmake and make./

How to write a README

A well written README file can enhance your project and portfolio. Develop your abilities to create professional README files by completing this free course.