F1TENTH: An Over-taking Algorithm Using Machine Learning

This repository is part of the paper "F1TENTH: An Over-taking Algorithm Using Machine Learning".
This is a lightweight 2D simulator of F1TENTH Racecar. It based on Robot Operating System, and using Rviz as visualization tool. This simulator has 2D-LiDAR simulation, collision checker, vehicle model, planning algorithm, and other features.

Please feel free to raise topics in Issues section, I will try my best to answer them!

Environment

Software

• Operating System: Ubuntu 20.04 (amd64/arm64)
• Robot Operating System: ROS Noetic (desktop-full)

If you want to use overtaking algorithm:

Depends on your GPU, there are two different ways of installing tensorflow. If your GPU has cuda cores, you can install from pip. If not, you must build from source. Moreover, you can install tensorflow and other python packages in a Miniconda env, but you must activate that environment before launch the simulator in a new terminal every time.

• tensorflow 2.10.0 (I think 2.9.0/2.8.0/2.7.0 should also work)
• numpy 1.22.4

If you want to use MPC algorithm:

• casadi 3.5.5
• numpy 1.22.4
• pandas 1.4.2

Hardware (recommended)

If you are using virtual machine, better using a virtual machine that support GPU virtualization, or you can dual-boot. I am using Parallels VM and developed everything in this virtual machine, no performance issue with M1 MAX.

• dual-boot
  CPU: 4 cores with 3GHz
  GPU: GTX 1660
  RAM: 8GB

• virtual machine
  CPU: 8 cores
  GPU: RTX 2080
  RAM: 16GB

Install for first time

If you have ros-noetic-desktop-full installed, the additional dependencies you must install are:

• tf2_geometry_msgs
• ackermann_msgs
• joy
• map_server

You can install them by running:

sudo apt-get install ros-noetic-tf2-geometry-msgs ros-noetic-ackermann-msgs ros-noetic-joy ros-noetic-map-server

To install the simulator package, clone the repository with the simulator and starter code into your catkin workspace by running command below:

mkdir -p ~/catkin_ws/src
cd ~/catkin_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/JZ76/f1tenth_simulator_two_agents.git

Then run catkin_make to build it:

cd ~/catkin_ws
catkin_make

Every time open the simulator in a new terminal

To run the simulator in a new terminal, run:

cd ~/catkin_ws
source devel/setup.bash
roslaunch f1tenth_simulator_two_agents simulator.launch

Note: after run cd ~/catkin_ws and source devel/setup.bash commands, you can keep that terminal opening, so that you don't have to run these two commands before launch the simulator every time.

Every time you edit some code in C++ files

To make your changes works, you need to build the simulator again, by using catkin_make:

catkin_make

Summary: Once you sourced a terminal, there are only two commands used frequently, one is catkin_make when you did some changes, another is roslaunch f1tenth_simulator simulator.launch to open the simulator

Uninstall

cd ~/catkin_ws/src
rm -rf f1tenth_simulator_two_agents
cd ..
catkin_make

You also need to manually delete f1tenth_simulator_two_agents dictionary in ~/catkin_ws/build

Usage

Please see Wiki section for instruction in detail

Citation

@INPROCEEDINGS{10275226,
  author={Zhang, Jiancheng and Loidl, Hans–Wolfgang},
  booktitle={2023 28th International Conference on Automation and Computing (ICAC)}, 
  title={F1TENTH: An Over-taking Algorithm Using Machine Learning}, 
  year={2023},
  volume={},
  number={},
  pages={01-06},
  doi={10.1109/ICAC57885.2023.10275226}}