Lab 9 — Multi-Car Coordination & System Integration

Duration90 minutes

Depends onLab 8

MilestoneTwo-car coordinated demo with no contact

StatusOutline — to be written

Practical focus

Run at least two cars; local obstacle safety; simple zone reservation or priority; test crossing and narrow-corridor cases.

Objectives

1. Operate two vehicles in a shared space without contact.
2. Keep local obstacle avoidance authoritative over any remote command.
3. Implement a simple coordination scheme — zone reservation or fixed priority.
4. Test the two cases that actually break naive schemes: a crossing and a narrow corridor.

Procedure outline

TODO — expand.

1. Two cars, independent missions, no coordination. Observe what goes wrong. Do this first — it motivates everything after it.
2. Add local obstacle safety: a car stops for anything in front of it regardless of its mission.
3. Add coordination. Two workable schemes:
   • Zone reservation — the arena is divided into zones; a car requests a zone before entering and releases it on exit.
   • Fixed priority — each car has a rank; lower rank yields at conflicts.
4. Test the crossing case: both cars arrive at an intersection together.
5. Test the narrow corridor: only one car fits, and both want through.

Local safety always wins

A car must stop for an obstacle even when the dashboard is telling it to drive. If a remote command can override the local obstacle check, the system is unsafe — and in Lab 10's shared arena it will find the failure for you.

Deadlock is the expected failure

Two cars that each politely wait for the other will wait forever. That is a genuine finding, not a bug to hide. Detect it — a timeout is enough — and say in your report how you broke the tie.

Deliverable

Two-car coordinated demonstration with no contact.