Author: Parsa Ghasemi
A ROS 2 (Jazzy/Humble) autonomous vehicle stack for a custom drive-by-wire platform, featuring GPS-based route planning, LiDAR obstacle avoidance, and full Nav2 integration.
Autonomous navigation on a simulated campus road network. The vehicle receives a GPS destination, computes a route via the campus road graph, and follows the path using Regulated Pure Pursuit with real-time LiDAR-based obstacle avoidance.
- GPS waypoint navigation — Send a destination as GPS coordinates; the route planner finds the optimal path through a pre-built campus road graph
- Nav2 integration — SmacPlannerHybrid (Ackermann-aware), Regulated Pure Pursuit controller, and behavior tree orchestration
- Sensor fusion — Dual EKF (local + global) fusing IMU, GPS, and wheel odometry via
robot_localization - LiDAR obstacle avoidance — Velodyne VLP-16 with VoxelLayer costmaps for real-time 3D obstacle detection
- Drive-by-wire control — PID speed control with Ackermann steering, communicating over UDP to a Teensy actuator MCU
- Web UI — Phone-based joystick controller (FastAPI + WebSocket) for manual bench testing
- Webots simulation — Full campus environment with Car PROTO, simulated sensors, and Nav2 for development and validation
| Package | Description |
|---|---|
avros_msgs |
Custom message/service definitions (ActuatorCommand, ActuatorState, PlanRoute) |
avros_bringup |
Launch files, URDF, YAML configs, Nav2 params, RViz config |
avros_control |
Actuator node: cmd_vel → PID → Ackermann inverse kinematics → Teensy UDP |
avros_webui |
Phone joystick WebSocket → direct actuator control |
avros_navigation |
Offline campus road graph generator (OSMnx → GeoJSON) |
avros_sim |
Webots simulation with campus world, vehicle driver, and sensor emulation |
- Compute: NVIDIA Jetson Orin (JetPack 6)
- LiDAR: Velodyne VLP-16
- Camera: Stereolabs ZED X (GMSL2 via ZED Link Quad)
- IMU/GNSS: Xsens MTi-680G with RTK corrections (NTRIP)
- Actuator: Teensy MCU over CAN bus (steering, throttle, brake, gear)
# Build
cd ~/AVROS
colcon build --symlink-install --packages-select avros_msgs
colcon build --symlink-install
# Launch simulation
ros2 launch avros_sim sim_navigation.launch.py
# Send a GPS navigation goal
ros2 action send_goal /navigate_to_pose nav2_msgs/action/NavigateToPose \
"{pose: {header: {frame_id: 'map'}, pose: {position: {x: 108.09, y: 198.93}}}}"Parsa Ghasemi GitHub: @Paarseus