Hi All, I'm looking for a way to record the motion of a robot that will be driving round a field and once it's stopped driving (ie end of a 1hr shift), store the information so a user can see where the robot went. I was looking through this forum and discovered rotary encoders and I think this is the best option because GPS can't be used. The only complications I see are the wheels slipping meaning the robot thinks its moved when in reality it hasn't and the other is when the robot turns I will need to use the steering angle or something to convert this but I haven't fully looked into that yet.
I'm just wondering if anyone has any better ideas of a way of recording the position, I've though about distance sensors but as the robot can be placed anywhere having a reference point makes this difficult.
browner900:
Hi All, I'm looking for a way to record the motion of a robot that will be driving round a field and once it's stopped driving (ie end of a 1hr shift), store the information so a user can see where the robot went. I was looking through this forum and discovered rotary encoders and I think this is the best option because GPS can't be used. The only complications I see are the wheels slipping meaning the robot thinks its moved when in reality it hasn't and the other is when the robot turns I will need to use the steering angle or something to convert this but I haven't fully looked into that yet.
I'm just wondering if anyone has any better ideas of a way of recording the position, I've though about distance sensors but as the robot can be placed anywhere having a reference point makes this difficult.
Any help is much appreciated.
You have not told us how often you need to store this information. That has a direct bearing on how much memory the storage will take. If you just record the fact that a turn was made and whether it was left or right, do you care how much space it takes for the turn? You can compute that anytime.
Paul
Use spiked wheels that can't slip (and will also aerate the soil), take that part out of the equation.
Thanks for the wheel idea, I'll definitely put that in, GPS was thought to be too simple for this project so we were tasked with tracking it another way
Paul_KD7HB:
You have not told us how often you need to store this information. That has a direct bearing on how much memory the storage will take. If you just record the fact that a turn was made and whether it was left or right, do you care how much space it takes for the turn? You can compute that anytime.
Paul
Its around every 30 seconds for say an hour of runtime, with the turning I just thought the distance the wheels travel would be affected by the turning radius, as the robot would be working with crops it would be travelling up and down channels between the crops.
browner900:
Its around every 30 seconds for say an hour of runtime, with the turning I just thought the distance the wheels travel would be affected by the turning radius, as the robot would be working with crops it would be travelling up and down channels between the crops.
Sure, turning takes some distance, but it will be close to a constant, so multiply the number of turns time the distance and add that to the total distance.
Paul