[Dprglist] Line Following Challenge Simulation

[John Swindle]

The Line Following Challenge is a significant contest. The combination of problems is realistic of an asphalt roadway that has been repaired, like driving 75 MPH posted speed limit at night from Buna to Mauriceville, TX on two-lane with no shoulder. The combination of 1) wide gaps, 2) S-turn gaps, 3) color changes, 4) intersections, 5) sharp angle turns, 6) noise from the tiles (edges and sparkles), 7) randomly and suddenly changing lane widths (a penchant of civil engineers) and 8) having these hazards close to one another (another penchant of civil engineers to do stupid things like closing a traffic lane in a curve) makes the contest interesting.
 
I thought a two-step test would solve the problem, but I am not sure. I have tried to make a solution that is stateless, not caring what it has seen before, but the intersections may have thwarted that goal. The acute angle turn interferes with the intersection avoidance. The stains were easy to ignore (though requiring two passes, for the white tiles and the black tiles), but the stains are quite realistic.
 
I like Carl's idea of showing a simulation of the control program. I get the impression that few of us do simulations. I always do simulations. Maybe my terminology doesn't sound right to you. My simulations are given a starting condition and then provide simulated loop data to the next iteration of the simulation. I bet many of us do this. If you don't, you're missing out on a great opportunity to prove your algorithims. 
 
The thing that many of you do that I have not yet done is datalogging or tracing the run. I find that to be a debugging tool, and I prefer to be on the creation side of the development instead of being on the debugging side. But, when using a development tool that has debugging built into it, the simulation is naturally debuggable.
 
Good stuff. Hoped I'd have a simple solution that could be hosted on someone's robot, but the S-turn gaps are a problem for my edge-detection.
 
It's a reasonable problem.
 
Best to y'all,
John Swindle
 


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