Robot Luggage

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Colecago
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Joined: Fri Mar 23, 2012 6:23 pm
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Robot Luggage

Post by Colecago »

Recently worked on this project with Ben Heck. Too bad in the video I drew my pnp transistor upside down :-(
http://blog.colecago.com/?p=87

Uses wireless communication to start an ultrasonic ping. A single ultrasonic sender is on the target and two ultrasonic receivers on the bot. The difference between the receiving times is the error used for left/right turn correction.

It was my first time using Arduino and I didn't really like it, wish I had much more time to work on this so I could do it on the AVR in straight C, and probably would try to do it wireless only. I chose ultrasonic this time for a few reasons:
1. Wasn't sure on what wireless would already be used in an airport
2. Didn't trust straight RSSI feedback as wireless is kinda magic with how it reflects, near ground and near body effects, etc
3. If I did time of flight, I'd have to have a pretty fast micro to catch that whereas ultrasonic is pretty slow in comparison to wireless transmission speeds

With more time I could pound out the wireless issues and put a device key in the transmission so the tracker only tracks one receiver.

I kind of want to redo this project using a bucket to do a poor-man's R2D2 to follow me around at maker faire. A lot of people expressed interest in buying it so maybe I can find someone to fund the next proto for Ben and I to build.
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