Contributing to the ARCHES PiCar-X

The ARCHES PiCar-X is open-source research software to exemplify digital twin research. We welcome everyone to contribute to this project. Contributions are not limited to code contributions, instead we welcome and recognize everything concerning:

  • Raising issues, questions and suggestions for using the ARCHES PiCar-X
  • Fixing bugs or implementing new features
  • Improving the documentation
  • Using the ARCHES PiCar-X as part of your (not necessarily scientific) digital twin research

In general you do not need a PiCar-X to start contributing. Our digital twin prototype can be used to develop all components, although the model is not perfect.

We Develop with Docker

Keep in mind that all contributions should be able to run in an environment with Docker containers. The CI/CD pipelines use Docker to execute all steps in an fully automated way. Especially, the integration tests are executed in Docker containers.

Start Contributing

If you have bug reports, feature requests, questions or suggestions, you may create a GitHub issue or directly contact maintainers. You can also create a GitHub pull request if you have already implemented bug fixes and improvements.

If you would like to get more involved in ARCHES PiCar-X development and maintenance, you may contact us as well.

Relevant technologies, tools, and concepts your should be familiar with:

Any Contributions You Make Will be Under the Apache License Version 2.0

In short, when you submit code changes, your submissions are understood to be under the same Apache License 2.0 that covers the project. Feel free to contact the maintainers if that’s a concern.

Internal Project Structure

The ARCHES PiCar-X is organized as a monorepo containing multiple largely independent modules in subdirectories. See the project’s README.md for an overview of all modules. Each module directory provides a dedicated README.md file describing how to build, test, package,… the corresponding module.