Essential Components of AutoKarr

 

The main parts of the AutoKarr are the National Instrument (NI) sbRIO 9606 board, the Futaba S1355 servo, the Sharp GP2YOA21YK infrared sensors, and the RC motor. The main drive system comprises of the servo and the motor. The servo actuates the direction of the AutoKarr while the motor determines the throttle of the AutoKarr. The infrared sensors provide proximity distance reading of the AutoKarr’s surroundings as it begins its automated parking sequence. The NI sbRIO 9606 reads the infrared data, processes it, and sends PWM signals to the motor and the servo to react accordingly. The PWM signals sent to the motor would determine how fast the AutoKarr is going while the PWM signal sent to the servo would determine the yaw angle of the AutoKarr.

The Capabilities of AutoKarr

 

The AutoKarr offers two operating modes, i.e. automatic parallel parking mode and manual user control mode. 

 

In the manual user control mode, the user could control the car using the arrow keys on the keyboard. The user could also control the speed of the car by choosing ‘gears’, which are simulated through the PWM signals sent from the National Instrument (NI) Single Board RIO (sbRIO) 9606 to the motor. 

 

In the automatic parallel parking mode, the AutoKarr would scan the street for a parking space and parallel-park itself when a space is found. A video of this process could be found in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onTAjU4-69E. 

Reaction Time of AutoKarr

 

In the automatic parallel parking mode, the AutoKarr would rely on its infrared sensors to detect any obstacles in its way. Since the AutoKarr is programmed to be a  real-time system, it would have the ability to detect any obstacles using its infrared sensors in a thousandth of a second. The sbRIO controller would then process those sensor inputs and react by actuating the motor and the servo within a hundredth of a second. This allows AutoKarr to quickly react to obstructions to avoid accidents and crashes. 

Controls of Autokarr

 

Because the NI sbRIO 9606 board is programmed in LabView, the user could control the AutoKarr through LabView graphic user interface (GUI). The user could input his command through this GUI, which also shows the status of the car, the operating modes of the car, the power level of the car, the direction of the car, and the proximity distance readings. The NI sbRIO 9606 board communicates with the user and the LabView GUI via an Ethernet cable. However, further improvement could be made in the future by adding a Bluetooth module so that the user would be able to send commands and receive feedback data wirelessly with AutoKarr.