OpenPodcar: an Open Source Vehicle for Self-Driving Car Research

TL;DR

OpenPodcar is an affordable, open source autonomous vehicle platform based on a mobility scooter, enabling research in autonomous driving, human interaction, and last-mile transportation with comprehensive hardware and software resources.

Contribution

It introduces a low-cost, fully open source autonomous vehicle platform with detailed hardware, software, and simulation tools for research and development.

Findings

System build cost around USD7,000 in 2022

Capable of transporting passengers at speeds up to 15km/h

Provides a realistic platform for human-vehicle interaction studies

Abstract

OpenPodcar is a low-cost, open source hardware and software, autonomous vehicle research platform based on an off-the-shelf, hard-canopy, mobility scooter donor vehicle. Hardware and software build instructions are provided to convert the donor vehicle into a low-cost and fully autonomous platform. The open platform consists of (a) hardware components: CAD designs, bill of materials, and build instructions; (b) Arduino, ROS and Gazebo control and simulation software files which provide standard ROS interfaces and simulation of the vehicle; and (c) higher-level ROS software implementations and configurations of standard robot autonomous planning and control, including the move_base interface with Timed-Elastic-Band planner which enacts commands to drive the vehicle from a current to a desired pose around obstacles. The vehicle is large enough to transport a human passenger or similar load at speeds up to 15km/h, for example for use as a last-mile autonomous taxi service or to transport delivery containers similarly around a city center. It is small and safe enough to be parked in a standard research lab and be used for realistic human-vehicle interaction studies. System build cost from new components is around USD7,000 in total in 2022. OpenPodcar thus provides a good balance between real world utility, safety, cost and research convenience.