I'm building a simple motorized vehicle that I wish to make autonomous through the use of neural networks. I am using Arduino as I am new to electronics but more experienced in programming. I'm sure there are much more powerful microcontrollers out there, but for my purposes (and funds) an Arduino Mega 2560 is what I would prefer to use (and I already have one). Now I suspect that the Mega, even though it is far more capable than an Uno or similarly small Arduino boards, is not capable of running a neural network that take inputs from a decently numbered array of sensors and generates several outputs (maybe 5?).
My idea, then, is to run the neural network on my phone if it is fast enough, or my desktop computer if not. Either way, I figured the best way to transmit the input and output data back and forth between the external processing unit (phone/desktop) and the Arduino will be WiFi. I saw a YouTube video of someone controlling an RC car with an android app they created, transmitting data through WiFi, and while a bit laggy for RC purposes, it seemed to be within 1 second of latency.
Does anyone know if WiFi would be fast/reliable enough to control a little autonomous vehicle? Assume that it will be traveling about the pace of an adult human walking, and reacting to its surroundings based on sonar sweeping. (Latency of data transmission will be important because the sonar data will have to be processed by the computer, but ideally the robot will keep moving without slowing down or stopping to wait for the data.)
Best Answer
Yes, this IS possible. There are even people who control their Quadrocopters with WiFi, but the latency really is a problem. this thing is a commercial product and they let the user control it with wifi, but they have a huge load on algorithms on board to make it controllable. in your application I would never use WiFi but 433MHz/868MHz you can buy modules for around 5€ - called RFM12 (from hoperf). there is a huge load of librarys for these in the internet. Small tip: don't do all the processing on the one big host, the delay takes longer than the processing on board.