Autonomous Self-Driving Solar Race Car

Project goal: To design, build and test a kit that gives a solar powered go-kart autonomous capability. The design integrates a servomotor for steering, electric actuator for braking, and GPS and lidar for control and position updates. All components are controlled by an Arduino Mega microcontroller. The variable voltage output from the Arduino allows control of the throttle. The pure pursuit algorithm is used as the control loop, which uses a goal point found along the path and steers the kart toward it with updates from GPS. The lidar was integrated for collision avoidance, stopping the kart whenever it recognizes something in its path. A modified go-kart was tested at the Musselman Honda Circuit in Tucson, Arizona. The developed kit can be used in the Racing the Sun competition, and it is hoped that high school students will start building autonomous go-karts in 2019.