The Pre-Flight Checker (PFC) tool ensures proper operation of all connected sensors and checks prerequisites required for the car to be safely driven in autonomous mode. It is a shell script that consumes JSON files that define the sensors it should check.
During installation, PFC is initialized for the current configuration.
PFC runs on these hardware platforms:
For the following information, see the NVIDIA DRIVE AV Release Notes:
PFC must be installed with NVIDIA DRIVE™ AV.
Below are the prerequisites to ensure correct PFC results during bench mode validation. In bench mode, sensor data usually comes from recordings, but it can also come from sensors.
All camera and Radar sensors must be exposed to a valid environment. Specifically, cameras must:
Radar sensor must be separated from objects by at least 1-meter; otherwise, Radar data-validity fails.
Below are the prerequisite to ensure correct PFC results during in-car validation.
/usr/local/driveworks/tools/preFlightChecker/config
Enter:
$ sudo ./pfc_run.sh --rig <rig_file_path> --car agx-rel [--no-gui]
Where
<rig_file_path> is the path of the rig.json file that specifies each sensors to validate, based on the setup configuration.<car_no> identifies the car. For the NVIDIA AGX Platform, set this parameter to agx-rel. bench.--no-gui (optional) disables the PFC GUI and instead displays the result only on the console.For example:
$ sudo ./pfc_run.sh --rig hyperion-7-1-release.json --car agx-rel --no-gui
For NVIDIA Hyperion 7.1, the config rig file is available at:
/usr/local/driveworks/tools/preFlightChecker/config/hyperion7-1-release.json
hyperion7-1-release.json. It also displays the current sensor status in a sequence of four images:
When you use PFC in bench mode, it performs the same checks as in autonomous mode. However, in bench mode, CAN devices are unavailable. Those devices include brake, throttle, gear & steering. As a result, validation of those devices always fails.
/usr/local/driveworks/tools/preFlightChecker/config
Enter:
$ sudo ./pfc_run.sh --rig <rig_file_path>
Where
<rig_file_path> is the path of the rig.json file that specifies each sensors to validate, based on the setup configuration.For example:
$ sudo ./pfc_run.sh --rig hyperion7-1-release.json
For NVIDIA Hyperion 7.1, the config rig file is available at:
/usr/local/driveworks/tools/preFlightChecker/config/hyperion7-1-release.json
By default, PFC generates a log.
The following is an example of the log output.
The log provides the following information:
DATA-VALIDATE: Status of the data validity check performed on sensors. Supported values are:
For information on how PFC determines data validity, see Pre-Flight Checker Features.
This section explains how to interpret information in the log.
The FREQUENCY field for a sensor show a value of zero when data is not available. This can happen even though the sensor is connected properly. These symptoms can be due to:
The DATA-VALIDATE field for a camera shows INVALID when there are issues with the sensor position.