Embedded Computer Systems and Applications (ELE547)

Guidelines for The Term Design Project

 

In this semester, each student is expected to design an autonomous car using an embedded computer as the term project. You will apply the knowledges that you learnt in the class and through reading and net surfing to implement a real self-driving vehicle. Specifically, you will use the following knowledge and skills for the car design:

1.     Embedded computer architecture (ARM) including CPU, Memory, I/O, and networking;

2.     General Purpose I/O (GPIO) interface design and configuration;

3.     General Purpose Timer and PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) design and configuration;

4.     Interrupt handling;

5.     AD/DA conversions;

6.     Serial communication and interfacing;

7.     Networking: wired and wireless;

8.     Programming using assembly, C, or Python;

9.     Linux operating system;

10.  Car assembly (simple mechanical assembly, one whole day of work).

The end result of the project is a working autonomous vehicle with the following features:

Ø  A self-driving car follows a line (road) that has turns and obstacles;

Ø  The car can be controlled by a PC or smartphone through wireless network;

Ø  The car can be controlled by voice commends;

Ø  The car can avoid obstacles and road blocks;

Ø  Any additional feature that you would like to implement.

v Important Due Dates:

*    Project Proposal Due Date: Oct. 15th . (A power point presentation describing exactly your design and plan for the project)

*    Proposal Presentation Date: Oct. 15th . (Each student will present your project proposal, your specific tasks in the project, and expected results in 10 minutes. PowerPoint presentation is required)

*    Project Progress Reports: Nov. 18th . (Each student will present project progress to date, issues and solutions to be shared in the class)

*    Project Demo and Final Presentation: Dec. 9th  . (Project presentation and demonstration start. Each student will do a 10 minutes presentation including project demo)

*    Final Report Due Date: Dec. 9th .

Requirements for Project Reports

1.     Proposal part:

      • Objectives and motivations: state clearly your objectives of the project and why you think it is a useful work to perform.
      • Background: state explicitly what the current state-of-the-art is in the field of your project, give references if necessary.
      • Specific design: your design and plan of the project. You need to be specific on this and include flowchart, programs needed, and hardware diagrams.
      • Based on your knowledge, write down what results you would expect from the project.

2.     Final Report Part:

      • Describe clearly the procedure of your experiments and how you conducted the experiments.
      • Observations: what happened during your experiments? Describe in detail all observations you had.
      • Analysis and interpretation of results. This is the important part of your report. You should explain what you observed in the project, analyze and interpret your results.
      • Discussion and suggestions: Through your experiments, what have you learnt? Do you have any suggestions for future classes or improvement on the learning experiences?