AutRcCar

This is an autonomous RC car using Raspberry Pi model 3 B+, Motor-driver L293d, Ultrasonic-sensor- HCSR04 and Picamera, along with OpenCV. Inspired from Hamuchiwa's autonomous car project. This project has two more contributors - Mehzabeen Najmi and Deepthi.V, who are not on Github. A paper has been published in an open access journal. You can use that to implement this project and get a lot more info Here's the link. Do cite us if you use it :)

Components:

1. Raspberry Pi 3 B,
2. Pi camera,
3. L293d motor driver,
4. Old RC car or 2 DC motors and wheels,
5. 9V battery for the motors,
6. Power Bank for the raspberry pi.

Hardware :

Description of Connections :

1. Red - Power-Positive.
2. Black - Ground.
3. Blue & Purple - Connections from l293d to Raspberry Pi.
4. Ochre - Connections HC SR-04 Ultrasonic Sensor to Raspberry pi.
5. Orange - Connections to the motors.

L293d	Raspberry Pi 3B+:
Pin1	Pin13
Pin2	Pin3
Pin3	Motor1
Pin4,5,12,13	Pin9
Pin6	Motor2
Pin7	Pin5
Pin8	9v Power
pin9	Pin15
Pin10	Pin7
Pin11	Motor3.
Pin14	Motor4.
Pin15	Pin11.
Pin16	Pin2.

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Software :

Steps to train the car - OPENCV:

The flask folder contains all the required files to control the pi car from any device (connected to the same network) using a browser, while streaming the camera data.

1. SSH into your raspberry pi and go to the flask folder.
2. Run python app.py and open the browser on another device. Type in your raspberry pi's IP address:5000 (which is the default port. Can be changed.)
3. Drive your car around while recording the camera stream from RPi_Cam_Web_Interface cloned and installed from Github. Link - https://github.com/silvanmelchior/RPi_Cam_Web_Interface
4. Run "Opencv_vid2.py" - convert video to images and save it in "TrainingData" folder.
5. Sort out the images of left direction into folder named "left", images of right direction into the folder named "Right" and so on.
6. Open and run the "trainer.py" file to convert the sorted images into numpy array and accordingly label them, using another file called label_images.py. After labeling, the npz file is saved and file name along with image count is returned to trainer.py file, where the training data gets split into 80:20 ratio. The model can be trained on 80% of the data and tested on the rest 20% data. This is good practice. Function "dataSplitter()" does this job.
7. npz file will be saved in "training_data_temp" folder.
8. Use the file "csv1.py" to convert npz file into csv format in case required to debug.

Direction	Labels
Left	[1 0 0 0]
Forward	[0 1 0 0]
Right	[0 0 1 0]
Reverse	[0 0 0 1]

9. The model gets saved in mlp_xml folder.

Steps to deploy the openCV model on the pi:

1. Transfer the saved xml model to the pi. -On Windows, use WinSCP software for really quick transfer of mlp.xml files. -On linux, you can directly use scp command after SSH into pi.
2. cd into your directory where this repo is cloned.
3. Copy the filename of your xml file and paste it at the neuralnet() object initialization.
4. Run Python3 Autodriver.py to run the car autonomously.

Using the Keras model:

1. Fire up jupyter notebook in the cloned directory.
2. Open the "KerasModel2.ipynb" i-python file.
3. Press Shift+Enter to execute the code.
4. The training data file will be saved in "kerasTranining" folder.
5. The model will be saved in "KerasModels" folder.
6. Be sure to create these folders before executing the code.
7. The last set of lines are optional. They're to write a CSV file of the trained model and parameters to a json file.

Deploying Keras model in raspberry pi:

1. Install numpy using - sudo pip install numpy. (First check if you already have it.)
2. Install scipy using - sudo pip install scipy.
3. Install tensorflow or Theano. Prefer the one you use on host computer. Here's a link to installation process for Tensorflow - https://github.com/samjabrahams/tensorflow-on-raspberry-pi/blob/master/GUIDE.md Here's a link to installation process for keras using Theano as backend - http://www.instructables.com/id/Installing-Keras-on-Raspberry-Pi-3/
4. Install keras using - sudo pip3 install keras. Here's a link to installation process - https://medium.com/@paroskwan/layman-installation-guide-for-keras-and-tensorflow-on-rpi-3-38b84f3e59dc
5. Transfer your keras model from your host computer to the raspberry pi. (use WinSCP if on windows).
6. Edit the file Autodriver_keras.py and include the filename of your saved model.
7. Run the Autodriver_keras.py file by executing the command - python3 Autodriver_keras.py There maybe some issues here especially if you are going to use python3.5 here, because tensorflow doesn't have the wheel for python3.5. It has for 3.4. So try using Theano.

The autonomous car

Autonomous.py in action