5. Controlling the car

Controlling the car

Once all hardware is configured and all software is installed, you should be able to control the car. If the steps on this page are not working, please double-check if you executed all previous steps properly. If problems keep occurring, please contact the organization for further support.

Safety button

TODO

Switch driving mode

There are 2 driving modes to control the car: manual mode and software (AI) mode. In manual mode you use the RF controller to steer the car. In software mode, the AI module in the car driver component will take over control of the wheels.

By default, the driving mode will be set to manual driving. To switch to software mode, you'll have to execute some commands.

First of all, make sure you are connected with your Raspberry Pi and that you have an open terminal in the cardrivers container. View the Accessing your Raspberry Pi page to see the necessary steps to do this.

If you want to switch on software/AI driving, perform the following command:

rostopic pub /master/ai/start_driving std_msgs/Bool True --once

Likewise, to stop the AI steering (software driving mode), execute the command below:

rostopic pub /master/ai/start_driving std_msgs/Bool False --once

Important!! Note that the emergency stop button will still be available when the AI is driving. Make sure to stay alert when your software is steering the car and to put it to a halt when things go wrong!

Example SW drive script

TODO

Useful links

TODO

• opencv
• donkeycar
• ...