Autonomous Perception

A robotics perception engineering project documenting the transition from traditional 2D computer vision to ROS2-based autonomous perception systems.

Built using CARLA, ROS2, OpenCV, and YOLOv8, the project progresses through a series of engineering phases covering simulator integration, perception pipelines, modular ROS2 architectures, and system validation workflows.

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Technology Stack

Category	Technologies
Simulation	CARLA 0.9.15
Robotics Middleware	ROS2 Humble
Computer Vision	OpenCV
Object Detection	YOLOv8
Programming Language	Python
Communication	CycloneDDS
Environment	Windows 11 + WSL2 Ubuntu 22.04

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System Architecture

CARLA Simulator
        │
        ▼
ROS2 Communication Layer
        │
        ▼
Perception Pipeline
        │
        ▼
Modular ROS2 Architecture
        │
        ▼
Validation & Benchmarking

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Completed Phases

✅ Phase 1 — CARLA + ROS2 Integration

Validated end-to-end communication between CARLA and ROS2 using RGB camera streaming and OpenCV visualization.

📁 View Phase 1

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✅ Phase 2 — Real-Time Object Detection

Integrated YOLOv8 into the ROS2 perception pipeline for real-time object detection and visualization.

📁 View Phase 2

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✅ Phase 3 — Modular ROS2 Architecture

Converted standalone scripts into a reusable ROS2 package architecture with launch files, configuration management, and automated deployment workflows.

📁 View Phase 3

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🚧 Phase 4 — Offline Replay & Benchmarking

Documentation will be published after project milestone release.

📁 View Phase 4

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Demonstrations

Phase 1 — CARLA + ROS2 Integration	Phase 2 — Real-Time Object Detection
End-to-end CARLA → ROS2 → OpenCV pipeline validation	Real-time object detection using YOLOv8 and ROS2

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Future Work

Planned areas of development include:

• Network profiling and communication analysis
• Sensor synchronization
• Multi-camera perception
• 3D perception workflows
• Sensor fusion
• Autonomous systems engineering workflows

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Project Journal

Detailed development notes, planning, experiments, and progress tracking are maintained separately:

• roadmap/project_journal.md