Automated Self-Navigating Car, Based on Arduino

C, Self-Navigating Car, Arduino

Completed in Oct, 2022

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Structure of repo
• Dependencies

Overview

This project represents a solution for an Automated Self-Navigating Car utilizing Arduino as the core component. The car is capable of navigating through intricate mazes and avoiding obstacles, demonstrating an understanding of robotics and automation principles.

Key Features

• Advanced Navigation: Employs complex algorithms to navigate through mazes and avoid obstacles efficiently.
• Cross-Platform Compatibility: Accompanied by build scripts for both Windows and Unix-based systems, ensuring ease of use across different platforms.
• Modular Design: Structured with clear and concise code, segregated into multiple files for easy understanding and modification.
• Robust Error Handling: Implemented with meticulous error handling to manage unforeseen situations and ensure smooth operation.

Structure of repo

• .vscode/ - various adjustments for Visual Studio Code users for easier coding, such as updating the includePath property so that VS Code can recognize our header files. Configurations are available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

  • If you are developing on Windows, it is important to run

    git config --global core.autocrlf false

    to avoid any strange conflicts that might come in commit diffs based on how Windows handles end-of-line characters, as well as setting your end-of-line sequence in your IDE to "LF" rather than "CRLF".

• include/ - folder containing header files (files that have the .h extension) - these usually contain code we want to import into other files.

• os/ - folder which contains OS-specific files for compilation - for our case, this contains the SDL2 and SDL2_gfx files required just for Windows users.

• src/ - folder containing source code files (files that have the .c extension) - these control how various components of our program work.

• Makefile - automatically compiles the program and allows for easy checking of source code changes by using the Make build automation program.

• build_run_clean.sh - Bash shell script to to easily build, run, and clean up files after building a program in one step for macOS and Linux - a really handy shortcut!

• build_run_clean.sh - a Batch script for Windows that does the same things as build_run_clean.sh, just, well, for Windows.

• src/

  • main.c: Entry point of the application.
  • robot.c: Contains the logic related to the robot's movements and actions.
  • wall.c: Manages the wall and obstacle-related functionalities.
  • formulas.c: Houses mathematical formulas used in the project.
  • mazeSetup.txt, mazeSetup2.txt, mazeSetup3.txt: Maze configuration files.

• include/

  • robot.h, wall.h, formulas.h, structures.h: Header files containing declarations and documentation.

Technical Stack

• Programming Language: C
• Platform: Arduino
• Build Tools: Makefile, build_run_clean.bat (Windows), build_run_clean.sh (Unix)

Dependencies

• GCC compiler for code
  • On Windows, you will have to install a toolkit which supports this. The most common one is Mingw-w64 - instructions for installing are below.
  • On macOS, if you have Command Line Tools for Xcode installed, gcc points to Clang to compile C programs, which effecitvely produces the same output.
  • On Linux, gcc should be available from most distro's repositories.
• SDL2 (included in repository for Windows)
• SDL2_gfx (included in repository for Windows)
• Make program for interpreting makefiles
  • On Windows, we will use mingw32-make from Mingw-w64
  • On macOS, this is usually preinstalled as make
  • On Linux, this is available in most distro repositories as make