I will be using the Arduino Uno for the robot to search for colour specific objects and place it on pre determined locations.
What will be the easiest/most convenient and the best way to do this? It can be either or both.
I have been looking at IR beacon triangulation but on further research I read that its unnecessary for a static environment and too complex. I'm looking at cartesian systems to check whether I can make the robot remember the exact (x,y) co ordinates but I can't seem to find good information on that.
Is there a way I could program a map with the key locations and boundaries logging data simultaneously (constantly knowing where it is) such that it could do different tasks at different locations and I have total control over the environment?
If you have total control over the environment and you don't want to use external reckoning, then make the floor a checkerboard pattern and sense where you are with IR sensors like a line follower. If a task is in grid {276,134}, given a starting location of {20,20} you should be able to navigate there.
I'm sure there are lots of things that could be done, but with the limited information and restrictions you supplied I just tossed out a quick one. If you give them details and a sense of the bigger picture, folks will come up with all sorts of things.
The board is pre-determined, with the blocks placed at fixed locations at the start. The blocks can also be moved by the opponent robot in which case the robot has to sweep the whole board for the blocks avoiding the boundaries and the opponent bot. The aim of the robot is to pick the block and place it in one of three specific places on the board.
One approach to solving the problem is for the robot to know where it is and how it is oriented at all times, and this turns out to be a very difficult challenge. You can put shaft encoders on the wheels to help estimate the distance traveled from a starting point and also changes in orientation, but wheel slippage or bumping into an obstruction quickly throws this process off. External markers can be used, but then the question is how to detect them, how to reliably estimate distances, etc. GPS works only outdoors and is far too inaccurate for your purposes. Google "robot self localization" or "robot position mapping" for a start.
So this is a competition? This is your senior project?
What jremington said about research.
Maybe you could use ultrasonic PING type sensors. If the playing area has walls, maybe you coudl distance find off the walls to determine location. Robot orientation becomes an issue. Might need an IR beacon with a detector on a servo to determine orientation. I don't think this is a trivial project.
This is 2nd year project for Uni and if it is good enough, we will be taking part in a competition. The competition is called Eurobot 2014.
We are allowed to place 3 IR beacons on the walls and we are making sure that the robot only turns in 90 degrees if it does turn.
Will that make the process any easier?
you can use the tiny GPS for location skylap you can know the prevuse location and store it in value and to rember it call the location again and this best solution if you can't use the GPS tell me i use it befor and i can help you by conatct me on torky91991@hotmail.com or torky91991@gmail.com and we can find another sensor to know the location of the robot
iwearnexus:
We are allowed to place 3 IR beacons on the walls and we are making sure that the robot only turns in 90 degrees if it does turn.
Will that make the process any easier?
Well, yeah. Anything else?
I would think one could put IR beacons in the corners of the play area and use something like the sensor above to determine the directions to the beacons. Then I think if you know the baseline distance between the beacons and the angles from the robot's current position to the beacons it is geometry and algebra and tangents and cosines etc to find a location. But that is more math than I know.
The idea works well, as long as you can get good clear site of the 3 targets. I also investigated putting a simple bar-code on the reflective tape. The idea was that if I could positively identify which target I was hitting, then if some of the targets were obscured, I could still calculate my position as long as I found any 3 targets.
I ran into some difficulties with a single laser dot hitting the reflective targets because they were so grainy. But, I think I solved that by making the laser put out a vertical line, rather than a single dot. Below is a forum for the Roomba Vacuum where I was discussing the concepts. I never fully completed the project, but the proof of concept worked well. http://www.robotreviews.com/chat/viewtopic.php?t=3411 http://www.robotreviews.com/chat/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5836