Code to accompany Harvey Merton and Thomas Delamore's final year research project at UoA. Please reference the following paper if you're using this code in an academic context:

H. Merton, T. Delamore, K. Stol, and H. Williams, "Deep Reinforcement Learning for Local Path Following of an Autonomous Formula SAE Vehicle," in Australasian Conference on Robotics and Automation, Sydney, Australia: Australian Robotics and Automation Association, Dec. 2023. ISBN 978-0-6455655-2-2, ISSN: 1448-2053. Available: https://ssl.linklings.net/conferences/acra/acra2023_proceedings/views/at_a_glance.html

This code is built off various repositories but mostly the FSSIM and fsd_skeleton repositories by AMZ Driverless, ku2482's gail-airl-ppo RL implementation and The University of Auckland's CARES stereo camera repositories. This README file is based off the README in the fsd_skeleton repository as this repository forms the higher-level structure of the workspace.

Original repositories: FSSIM: https://github.com/AMZ-Driverless/fssim fsd_skeleton: https://github.com/AMZ-Driverless/fsd_skeleton gail-airl-ppo: https://github.com/ku2482/gail-airl-ppo.pytorch

CARES custom ROS messages: https://github.com/UoA-CARES/cares_msgs Pylon stereo camera image publishing:https://github.com/UoA-CARES/pylon_camera Stereo camera calibration: https://github.com/UoA-CARES/stereo_calibration Stereo camera marker detection: https://github.com/maraatech/aruco_detector

Repository organisation

The code is organised in several top level packages/directories. The top level should adhere to the following subdivision of functionality (a more detailed description can be found in the folders themselves):

fsd_common/ - top-level launchfiles, and other files used by many packages

perception/ - folder for perception packages

estimation/ - folder for estimation packages

control/ - folder for control packages

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Placement of ROS packages

ROS Packages should be added in one of the top level work-package folders. The top level work-package folders themselves should not be used to store ros package information. The directory tree for lidar would look like:

~/fsd_skeleton
  |__ environment.sh
  |__ update_dependencies.sh
  |__ src
      |__ 0_fsd_common
      |   |__ fsd_common_meta
      |   |   |__ missions
      |   |__ fsd_common_msgs
      |__ 1_perception
      |   |__ perception_meta
      |   |__ lidar_cone_detection
      |   |   |__ package.xml
      |   |   |__ CMakeLists.txt
      |   |   |__ ...
      |
      |__ 2_estimation
      |   |__ estimation_meta
      |   |__ velocity_estimator
      |
      |__ 3_control

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Aliases (useful commands)

Once running update_dependencies, some aliases for commands will be added. Restart the terminal and the following commands will be available:

• FSD_source: sources environment from anywhere
• FSD_cd: change directory to root directory of skeleton_repo
• FSD_build: clean and build project (catkin clean and catkin build)
• FSD_launch_acceleration: launch mission, e.g. acceleration, trackdrive, autox etc
• FSD_rviz_acceleration: launch RVIZ with custom config for mission, e.g. acceleration, trackdrive, autox etc
• FSD_ATS: run automated test

Look atfsd_aliases to see full list, or add more custom aliases.

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Setting up the Workspace

1 Clone the repository:

cd ~
git clone 

2 Install dependencies

cd ~/uoa_fsd
./update_dependencies.sh

Add extra dependencies: pip install -r requirements.txt

3 Build workspace

cd ~/uoa_fsd
catkin build

4 Source environment

Assuming you've run ./update_dependencies.sh succesfully and restarted the terminal.

FSD_source

Else,

cd ~/uoa_fsd
source devel/setup.bash

TIP: to avoid having to source the workspace upon every terminal launch, add 'source devel/setup.bash' to the .bashrc file (hidden file located in ~/ directory)

5 Test setup

roslaunch fssim_interface fssim.launch

in new terminal

roslaunch fsd_common_meta trackdrive.launch

You should see the FSSIM open and a green line appear on the track to mark the trajectory. If the sim is setup for pure pursuit, the vehicle will follow the green line.

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Conventions

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ROS naming conventions

We use the naming conventions defined at http://wiki.ros.org/ROS/Patterns/Conventions

Work packages:

work_package, lowercase and _ as separator, e.g. lidar.

ROS packages:

workpackage_somename, lowercase and _ as separator, e.g. lidar_trimmer, as to make it clear what the package is used for.

ROS nodes

node_name, lowercase and _ as separator. Can be short.

ROS topics

topic_name, lowercase and _ as separator.

ROS messages

CamelCased.msg for message filenames. Message types are always CamelCase, whereas message fields are lowercase and _ as separator, e.g.

MyMessage.msg:
Header header
Float64 my_float
geometry_msgs/Point my_point

Style guides

ROS C++:

Google Style (http://wiki.ros.org/CppStyleGuide)

• Files: under_scored, exception for .msg files, CMakeLists.txt.
• Classes/types: CamelCase
• Functions/methods: camelCase
• Variables: under_scored and DESCRIPTIVE.
• Constants: ALL_CAPITALS.
• Global variables: AVOID except special cases. Rather have parameters defined in config.yaml.

ROS Python

PEP-8 style (http://wiki.ros.org/PyStyleGuide)

README files

Markdown syntax (https://github.com/adam-p/markdown-here/wiki/Markdown-Cheatsheet)

Future improvements

• Update to Python3, ROS Noetic and Ubuntu Bionic