Posted by Kris Verdeyen at 03/28/2001 5:26 PM EST
Engineer on team #118, Robonauts, from CCISD and NASA - Johnson Space Center and Friends.
In Reply to: Erm....
Posted by Kevin Sevcik on 03/28/2001 3:14 PM EST:
I've not actually done any work with the kit gyro, but some of these solid state sensors now can do really amazing things. It should be able to sense bumps, though, because it's reading actual yaw, as opposed to using dead reckoning (where it would be screwed up if the wheels were to slip). The trouble would probably come into play when we went over a bridge while turning. It would integrate the yaw change wrt the robot, and wouldn't have any way of translating that to an actual change on the field, I think. Actually, it might all work out in the end.
But that compass thing was interesting. - Why not hook up a cheap plastic compass (from SPI, of course) to a pot, and there we have our sensor.