Skip to content

MANUAL_DRIVER.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
91 lines (65 loc) · 2.96 KB

MANUAL_DRIVER.md

File metadata and controls

91 lines (65 loc) · 2.96 KB
Raw

Manual Driver

The manual driver allows interactive control of the ego vehicle using keyboard input. This is useful for:

  • Debugging and exploring simulation scenarios interactively
  • Testing specific driving behaviors manually
  • Visualizing camera feeds in real-time

Requirements

  • A display (X11 or Wayland) - the manual driver requires a GUI for keyboard input

Controls

Key Action
W / UP Accelerate (increase target speed)
S / DOWN Brake/Decelerate (decrease target speed)
A / LEFT Steer left
D / RIGHT Steer right
SPACE Emergency stop (zero speed)
ESC / Q Quit

The driver generates constant-curvature arc trajectories based on the current steering angle and speed, which are then tracked by the MPC controller.

Running the Manual Driver

While the bulk of Alpasim runs inside docker-compose, the manual driver runs as an external service (python script) on your machine - hence the term "external driver" later on.

Step 1: Start the Manual Driver

From the repository root, start the driver:

uv run --project src/driver python -m alpasim_driver.main \
  --config-path=configs --config-name=manual

The driver will start and display a pygame window showing the camera feed. It binds to 0.0.0.0:6789 by default (all network interfaces).

Step 2: Launch the Simulator

Run the wizard with the local deploy target and static external driver source:

uv run --project src/wizard alpasim_wizard \
  deploy=local \
  driver=manual \
  driver_source=external_static \
  topology=1gpu \
  wizard.log_dir=$PWD/manual_run \
  scenes.scene_ids='["your-scene-id"]'

The runtime will connect to your driver at localhost:6789.

Running Driver on a Separate Machine

If your driver runs on a different host or port, override the address with the driver's external IP (reported in its logs upon launch):

uv run --project src/wizard alpasim_wizard \
  deploy=local \
  driver=manual \
  driver_source=external_static \
  topology=1gpu \
  wizard.log_dir=$PWD/manual_run \
  scenes.scene_ids='["your-scene-id"]' \
  wizard.external_services.driver='["192.168.1.100:6789"]'

Configuration

The manual driver configuration is in src/driver/configs/manual.yaml. Key settings:

Setting Default Description
host 0.0.0.0 Interface to bind to (all interfaces)
port 6789 Port to listen on
inference.use_cameras ["camera_front_wide_120fov"] Camera to display
log_level INFO Logging verbosity

Simulation Settings

The driver=manual driver_source=external_static configuration includes settings optimized for interactive use:

  • 10 Hz control rate (vs. 2 Hz for batch evaluation) for smoother response
  • 1920x1080 camera resolution for better visualization
  • Localhost networking so containers can reach the external driver

These can be customized by overriding runtime.simulation_config on the command line.