Combining Raspberry Pi and Arduino to form a low-cost, real-time autonomous vehicle platform

This paper presents a novel, low-cost autonomous vehicle platform based on the combination of a Raspberry Pi mini-computer, an Arduino micro-controller, and a Zumo track-driven robot chassis. The Arduino allows the control law to be executed at hard real-time intervals while the Raspberry Pi provides additional computing power, a web interface, and wireless data-streaming for control tuning and debugging. The efficacy of the platform in controls education is assessed after using the platform for demonstration purposes in a first course on feedback control. The entire system including the Raspberry Pi and Arduino Uno costs roughly $215.