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Subject: 
Re: Navigation using landmarks (Was: Re: lasers and RCX)
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Wed, 26 Jun 2002 09:07:37 GMT
Original-From: 
Steve Baker <sjbaker1@airmail.netSAYNOTOSPAM>
Reply-To: 
sjbaker1@airmailIHATESPAM.net
Viewed: 
967 times
  
Mauro Vianna wrote:
"Steve Baker" wrote:

I looked into several patterns.  What would be ideal would be something which
you could drive across along any straightline path and get back your direction
and position from the pattern of dark and light.

It seems rather unlikely that such a pattern could exist - but I havn't
finished thinking about it yet.

Somebody in  this list already tried a pattern with 4 colors. If you can
have all your floor covered with squares with 4 distinct colors, you can
detect your aproximate position and direction. Unfortunatelly that won't
work for me. I don't want to build a big mat or redecorate my apartment. :)

I don't want to cover the entire floor - just place a *few* of these
things on the floor as landmarks.  The idea is that the robot would
run over one of these things, figure out exactly where it is (both
position and heading) - and then use dead-reckoning to get close enough
to the next landmark to re-sync itself.  If it ever missed a landmark, it
could detect that it had driven too far without finding it and do some
kind of spiral search to find it.

I already built the robot (wheelchair style) with 2 rotation sensors.
Although it seens very precise to move in a straight line, sometimes it
changes its direction by a few degrees. It looks like one of the rotation
sensors is losing some counts. Some people already reported this kind of
problem. I'll debug to be sure. I may need to change the gears to reduce the
rotation sensor speed. The problem is that I will lose precision as well.

Probably you need to INCREASE the speed that the sensor rotates.  I found
that the range 50 to 300 RPM was the most reliable range for the sensor:

  http://www.sjbaker.org/steve/lego/rotation_sensor.html

...but still, you can't expect perfection.  Wheels slip, their radii are
never *exactly* the same, there are imperfections in the surface you
are driving on, there is whiplash in your gear train.

Try to accellerate your robot smoothly up to speed - sudden starts and
stops can cause excessive wheel slippage.  It goes without saying that
if you run into a solid object at speed, your wheels will slip for
a while.  You can use a non-contact sensor (the IR port has been used
as a rangefinder - with mixed success) - or perhaps a large, bendy bumper
to detect imminent collision with enough time for a controlled stop.

----------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------------
Mail : <sjbaker1@airmail.net>   WorkMail: <sjbaker@link.com>
URLs : http://www.sjbaker.org
        http://plib.sf.net http://tuxaqfh.sf.net http://tuxkart.sf.net
        http://prettypoly.sf.net http://freeglut.sf.net
        http://toobular.sf.net   http://lodestone.sf.net



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: Navigation using landmarks (Was: Re: lasers and RCX)
 
(...) which (...) direction (...) Somebody in this list already tried a pattern with 4 colors. If you can have all your floor covered with squares with 4 distinct colors, you can detect your aproximate position and direction. Unfortunatelly that (...) (22 years ago, 24-Jun-02, to lugnet.robotics)

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