Labs

Ten labs, 90 minutes each, building one autonomous car — then a fleet of them.

The sequence is deliberate. Week 1 hands you a problem you cannot yet solve: the car will not drive straight. Everything through Week 6 builds the measurement and control tools you need, and Week 7 is where you finally fix it. Weeks 8–10 take the working vehicle and put it in a coordinated fleet.

• Lab 1 — PWM, Four Motors & Motor Mismatch

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  First full motion lab. Run four motors, introduce PWM, drive 4 m, and measure how far off straight you end up.

• Lab 2 — Motor Characterization & Encoders

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  Measure what the wheels are actually doing. PWM–speed curves, dead zone, saturation, and the left/right mismatch quantified.

• Lab 3 — LiDAR / ToF Distance Sensing

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  Mount a distance sensor, find its real range and field of view, and write a dependable obstacleDetected().

• Lab 4 — IMU + Sensor Calibration

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  Accelerometer and gyro, bias and noise, heading measurement, and calibration against known references.

• Lab 5 — Logging, Filtering & Sensor-Based Motion

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  Log everything at once, compare raw against filtered, and make the car slow down as an obstacle gets closer.

• Lab 6 — Feedback Control (P / PI / PID)

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  Desired versus actual. P first, then PI, then PID — and the windup failure in between.

• Lab 7 — Straight Driving, Turns & Localization

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  The payoff. Close the loop, re-run the Week 1 drift test, and beat it.

• Lab 8 — Payload Servo + ThingsBoard

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  A servo release mechanism, telemetry to a dashboard, and missions dispatched back to the car.

• Lab 9 — Multi-Car Coordination

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  Two cars, one arena. Zone reservation or priority, tested at a crossing and in a narrow corridor.

• Lab 10 — Final Autonomous Fleet Challenge

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  Pickup, navigate, avoid, deliver, release, report. Multiple cars, shared arena, unattended.

Before every lab

• Read the lab page before you arrive. Sessions are 90 minutes; there is no time to read from cold.
• Laptop with the Arduino IDE working — see Setup.
• Your group's car, battery charged.
• Your pin table from Lab 1. Every lab after the first assumes it.
• Know where the fire blanket and the LiPo bucket are. See Safety.