Hi. I have an idea for a project. What i want to do is to build a square, for example 50 cm * 50 cm and make it into an xy grid. On the sides if the grid I was thinking of mounting threaded rods on both axis and drive them with dc motors. On the rods I am thinking of mounting either ir-sensors or ultra sonic sensors to determine where an object is within the grid. After determening the objects position I want a robot arm to go to the position and pick up the object and move it outside the grid.
Any ideas or recommendations to how I could do this project? I would also like to have the possibility for this contraption to interact with a plc instead of an arduino at some point.
The proposed sensors won't work. They can eventually detect objects somewhere in sight, but no angle or coordinates. Start e.g. with a red LED and a LDR, wich you move manually along the edges of the grid. Then put an object on the grid and find out when or whether at all you get a signal change from the LDR.
I'd suggest a long-distance light barrier, with a LED in a black tube or a laser diode sending a narrow beam to the LDR at the opposite side. IR and US can not form sharp enough beams for your purpose.
Last year a guy mounted the sensor of an optical mouse onto his gripper and used it to clean up his cavy cage.
Ok, thanks. I will look into that. It might be hard for an ldr to detect the objects I will be using as they are quite small.
I came up with another idea to this project though. Instead of using two threaded rods driven by two
ordinary dc motors. I use four threaded rods, one on each side of the grid, and drive them with 4 stepper motors. This way I could mount a laser diode on one side and an ldr or some sort of light sensor that will send a signal if it doesn't sense the laser on the other side. The laser and sensor would need to move perpendicular to each other.
Then I find out how many steps each motor needs to take to move 1cm. Then I can find out how many steps the stepper motors on each axis had to take before the sensor couldn't detect the laser anymore. And since I know how many steps there are in 1 cm I can calculate the position.
What do you think of this idea? I will try to make a drawing of this and post it here tomorrow. It's kind of hard to accurately describe what I mean...
Lasers look cool in movies, but are hard to use (aim) in projects.
A simple IR LED and 3-pin IR receiver beam break setup is easier to use,
and has an almost equal narrow beam (3-5mm diameter).
Leo..
Tranvaag:
What do you think of this idea? I will try to make a drawing of this and post it here tomorrow. It's kind of hard to accurately describe what I mean...
