Autonomous Driving in Physics Curriculum

Robotics and autonomous driving provide new opportunities for updating the physics curriculum to include modern technologies in teaching. Robotics can be used to teach new skills and to illustrate how the basic principles of physics come together in building a bot that requires both hardware and software. The project I will describe draws students from Engineering, Computer Science, and Physics. We use a power-wheel as the model vehicle. We implement motion sensors, compass, gyroscope, GPS, and a LIDAR controlled by a microcontroller to drive the vehicle on campus grounds. At this point, the vehicle drives itself around aimlessly by avoiding obstacles. The algorithm loops through specific instructions using the feedback from the motion sensors. The vehicle can also follow a given compass direction to maintain a specific course. At the next level, we would like to implement a GPS, which then coupled with a compass would be able to move the vehicle from a starting point to a destination. Also, this project can be a resource for designing new general physics lab experiments and for offering interdisciplinary, experiential learning for students using microcontrollers and sensors.