Agile Development Process of a By-Wire Electric Vehicle for Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition Self-Driving Challenges
Kaiqiao Tian, Kazuyuki Kobayashi, Ka C. Cheok · 2020
An agile process is a frequent redesign technique that is suitable for quick adaptation of various tasks, in contrast to a more time-consuming high-level design. In this paper, we describe the concept of an agile development process to convert a by-wire electric vehicle to meet Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC) Self-Drive Challenges. We converted a commercial electric vehicle into a basic self-driving by-wire electric vehicle within a limited development time to satisfy the rule. A key factor for enabling agile development is the Robot Operating Systems (ROS) environment for integrating multiple microcontrollers with sensor and actuator modules. The approach allows the rapid installation of hardware components implemented as nodes, and rapid debugging of software programs implemented as topics. Employment of ROS allows frequent reassessments that enable rapid troubleshooting and debugging. This paper illustrates how a team of eight students with three advisors were able to successfully integrate hardware and software to meet specific autonomous driving challenges in a matter of one and a half months. The advantages of the agile development process were confirmed in the team meeting the IGVC self-driving challenges.