Thirty Los Altos high school students are building a 1:10 scale model of a self-driving car that will be able to navigate autonomously around their school. Their goal is to learn about and experiment with machine-learning and deep-learning technologies.

It is a student-led effort.

They used open-source code and off-the-shelf parts. All the electronics are mounted on a platform of a Traxxas radio-controlled car, which interfaces with the power-steering servo and motor. The components used include 2D Lidar to detect obstacles, an Nvidia Jetson TX1 processor to control the car, an inertial measurement unit, and a speed controller with odometry. It also has a Logitech camera to enable the car to recognize obstacles, USB speakers, and batteries. In terms of software, the car runs on Ubuntu Linux, and most of the software is written in Python.

Brian Wang

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