[GSoc] Completion of pre-requisite challenge (line follower)

[vedcoder]

Hi everyone,

I'm Vidit! I am preparing my application for GSoC 2026 and have just completed the Follow Line pre-requisite challenge.

I really enjoyed working through the math and physics of this exercise. Instead of a simple reactive script, I implemented a full PID controller to ensure smooth cornering and stable straightaways.

Here is a quick breakdown of my implementation:

• Vision Pipeline: Converted the camera feed to HSV to robustly mask the red line against lighting changes. I also implemented a Region of Interest (ROI) crop to ignore the horizon and focus the centroid calculations purely on the immediate road ahead.
• PID Steering: Implemented a full Proportional-Integral-Derivative controller. I spent a good amount of time tuning the derivative gain (Kd) to eliminate high-frequency jitter on the straightaways, and added an anti-windup cap to the integral term to prevent the car from spinning out after sharp corners.
• Dynamic Velocity: Instead of a constant speed, the linear velocity (V) dynamically throttles down based on the absolute value of the proportional error. This allows the car to max out its speed on straightaways but automatically hit the brakes for tight corners.

Demonstration & Code:

• Video: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xm6ARjZEfKGYsJzYTZAOSA8-j9okjFJG/view?usp=sharing

(Side note: As an Apple Silicon user, I also recently submitted a small PR to update the user_guide.md with the --platform linux/amd64 Docker flag to help future Mac users get the simulator running smoothly! pr link: JdeRobot/RoboticsAcademy#3535)

I would love any feedback from the maintainers or the community on my implementation. Looking forward to contributing more to JDErobotics!

Best,
Vidit

[jmplaza]

Hi @vedcoder ,

nice solution to the (visual) FollowLine exercise at RoboticsAcademy. Adding a Derivative component to your Proportional controller would allow you to improve it and achieve lower lap times without oscillating.

Anyway there is no 'score' about this exercise. It is just one possibility for the Technical Challenge which we require to all GSoC-2026 applicants with JdeRobot. Solving more RoboticsAcademy exercises as user, contributing to the open issues about betatesting and understanding RoboticsAcademy, RoboticsInfrastructure and RoboticsApplicationManager base code will all of them also help you to write a meaningful proposal for GSoC2026 with JdeRobot.