Aakash Agrawal

MS Data Science UCSD

Sharing my Reflections on the courses I took as a Data Science major (MS) student at UCSD

ECE 148: Introduction to Autonomous Vehicles

Instructor: Prof. Jack Silberman

MAE Department Track
This beautiful track in the MAE department became very familiar throughout the quarter. Many late nights (and early mornings!) were spent here. Some even going until 5 AM to finish assignments and perfect our autonomous vehicle.

I took this upper-level undergrad course purely for fun and it turned out to be an absolute blast! Got to work with a team of talented undergrad students, which was both challenging and rewarding. Beyond the technical side, navigating the team through the demanding projects taught me a lot about leadership and mentorship. Balancing different skill levels, keeping everyone on track, and making sure everyone contributed was probably as valuable as the technical skills. Building the car from scratch was probably the most hands-on thing I've done. Learned how to work with Raspberry Pi, lots of debugging, hardware integration, amongst many things.

All my notes, debugs, and learnings from building the RoboCar can be found in this comprehensive Notion document.

Building the RoboCar
Working on the mechanics of the car, building it from the very ground up.
Fixing the OAK-D Lite Camera
With my friend Jason, fixing the OAK-D Lite camera of the car.
The Completed RoboCar
The completed autonomous vehicle.

Fall 2025