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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#avoidspam#.net>
Reply-To: 
(sjbaker1@)nospam(airmail.net)
Viewed: 
2420 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
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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 (...) (24 years ago, 24-Jun-02, to lugnet.robotics)

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