V-REP simulator

The control algorithm is defined in controller.py. A simple (unreliable) camera algorithm and barely tuned PID (also unreliable) controller is provided for you in the skeleton code in the SimulationAssignment class, which you should modify.

Feel free to change constants or add additional state variables as needed. You may also add additional items to csvfile.writerow to dump more useful data, as long as the keys are kept constant every iteration.

1. You will need to download and install V-REP 3.6.2.
2. With a track file open in V-REP, start controller.py. cory-track-fastcar.ttt and ee192_Round2 work. This can be in a separate terminal.
   • If controller.py refuses to start because it cannot find the shared library, you will have to copy the relevant shared library file from your local V-REP installation directory into the folder where controller.py is.
3. A few warnings will pop up in the simulator after starting - click through these, and the simulation should resume.
4. By default, the simulation will run one lap and exit. You can change this by passing in --laps into controller.py, with 0 meaning infinite. You can stop the simulation using the square stop button in V-rep.
5. Data will be dumped by default in car_data_lapX.csv, which you can visualize (plot) using log-visualizer.py in the telemetry repository. This invocation is a starting point assuming stock CSV output: python log-visualizer.py --merge linescan,line_pos --merge linescan_far,line_pos_far --merge x,y car_data.csv
6. You can also plot the X-Y (car track) data using xyplot.py. This invocation is a starting point assuming stock CSV output: python xyplot.py car_data_lapX.csv This script an optional -z column name argument to color-code (using absolute value of the data) the plot, defaulting to steer_angle.

Here is a short description of other files provided, that you do not need to modify.

• vrep.py, vrepConst.py, vrepInterface.py are API files provided by V-REP.
  • vrep.py has been modified to try to auto-detect your V-REP installation location to automatically determine the API shared library location. This only works on some platforms right now.
• simpleCsvDict.py provides a modified csv.DictWriter-like class that encapsulates both Python2 and Python3 styles for opening CSV files, and does not require fieldnames to be provided separately.
• carInterface.py provides a higher-level API for controlling the simulated car.

The majority of this code has mypy static type annotations. If you have mypy installed (can be done via pip) you can typecheck the code using:

dmypy run -- --follow-imports=error --disallow-untyped-defs --disallow-incomplete-defs --check-untyped-defs -p controller -p carInterface -p simpleCsvDict