Hack the Car 🚗

Did you ever want to work an actual research vehicle? Well, here you can!

The setup consists of:

• A VW Passat
• A Test driver that will drive around for you
• Cameras
• LiDARs
• GPS
• Vehicle Data
• You, your laptop and your software 😊

Note that there will be no actual closed-loop control of the vehicle. You will only be able to read data from the vehicle, but not control it.

📚 About

Eclipse eCAL™ is a publish subscribe Middleware with the main focus on research and development of autonomous driving algorithms.

• A Publisher publishes data to a topic, identified by a name.
• A Subscriber subscribes to a topic, identified by a name. When it received data, it calls a callback function.

👾 Hack Ideas

• Recognize predestrians
• Develop HMIs to fuse point cloud data on an OpenStreeMap
• Use the LiDAR to scan a 3D Object
• Welcome the owner à la Face ID

💻 Requirements

• A laptop:

  • Running Windows or Linux. MacOS may work too, but eCAL is poorly tested on that OS.
  • An ethernet interface (or a USB to ethernet adapter)

• Programming languages

  • Recommended: Python or C++
  • Other options: C, C#, JavaScript, Rust

👨‍🏫 Hack-Coaches

• Kerstin Keller
• Florian Reimold
• Kristof Hannemann
• Rex Schilasky
• Florian Geis

🛠 Template Setup

1. Download and setup Eclipse eCAL:

   • 🐧 Ubuntu:

     sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ecal/ecal-latest
     sudo apt-get update
     sudo apt-get install ecal

   • 🪟 Windows:

     • Download the latest release from https://eclipse-ecal.github.io/ecal/_download_archive/download_archive.html

2. Connect your Laptop to the vehicle via ethernet cable.

Example measurement: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-wHCBS1mx420NWE4ZJfxF6UJuahHMS0J?usp=sharing

👀 All necessary links

Eclipse eCAL:

• 🏠 Homepage: http://ecal.io
• 👨‍💻 GH Repository: https://github.com/eclipse-ecal/ecal
• 💡 How to compile eCAL: https://eclipse-ecal.github.io/ecal/development/building_ecal_from_source.html