REU Project: Autonomous RC Rally Car for Jump and Drift Racing
Published:
| Presentation Slides: Presentation Slides | Project Abstract: Project Abstract |
Served as an AEOP Summer Robotics Research Intern at the Center for Autonomy at UT Austin, participating in the AEOP LLMs for Safe Navigation REU under the guidance of Dr. Ufuk Topcu, Dr. Christian Ellis, and PhD Student Rwik Rana.
- Researched autonomous off-road navigation and drift/jump control dynamics under Dr. Ufuk Topcu and Dr. Christian Ellis as a $6,000-stipend AEOP REU Scholar to architect a low-cost, 1/16 scale autonomous RC car as a modular research platform for drift and jump navigation studies.
- Executed the complete electromechanical assembly by designing and soldering a custom circuit board to power and integrate all components, including a Raspberry Pi 5/Jetson Nano and motor controllers, verified via multimeter testing.
- Programmed a low-level C++/ROS 2 controller for Ackermann steering and throttle control, validating full teleoperation across 5+ test runs, including a successful jump test.
- Ran a visual SLAM algorithm using camera-based perception in the F1Tenth simulator to validate localization and control, laying the groundwork for planned IMU fusion and post-jump re-localization toward fully autonomous operation.
