Racing The Sun Autonomously: Autonomous Kit For Solar Powered Karts

Abstract

Racing the Sun is an annual STEM event hosted by UA Tech Parks. The main goal of the Racing the Sun event is to encourage high school students to pursue careers in STEM through construction of a solar-powered go kart. Autonomy is a rapidly developing field and has great potential for careers for younger students. The purpose of this project was to create an autonomous kit that can be implemented into future Racing the Sun races. This autonomous kit will introduce high school students to the applications of complex systems such as GPS sensors, electrical wiring, computer programming, and PID controllers. The system utilizes GPS sensors to determine its position in real time and send this information to a PID controller that calculates the necessary steering angle to keep the kart along a desired path. The main goal of the PID controller is to analyze the kart’s position relative to the desired path and minimize the perpendicular distance the kart is from the track (cross-track error). The user can deactivate the system using a kill switch that cuts power to the kart when pressed.