Electrical componenets for autonomous navigation

[R2K2D2]

There are a few ways that a navigation system could be setup for the robot. Last year we used a network of sensors to give us data that we then used for autonomous mode. We have 4-Bit rotary encoders on the front two drive wheels. Basically what this did was count each time the wheel made one revolution. So, based on this we get a distance per time. Then we used the the gyro chip to get our change in angle per unit time. We had this input to the computer for autonomos. Now, you could also use an accelerometer. You could get a 3-axis accelerometer that would give you acceleration in the x, y, and z axis'. You would then take this and input it into 2 integrating op-amp circuits which would then give you a position vs. time readout. This is based on physics/calculus. We know that if we integrate Acceleration (m/s^2) once we get Velocity (m/s) and if we integrate Velocity we get position vs. time, which is the data you want for navigation. Another way to do autonomous mode would be based on simple timing. You could write your program for autonomous such that after a certain time interval the robot will do/complete a certain action. For example, move the drive motors at a certain value for a certain amount of time in a forward direction. then drive one motor in forward and another motor in reverse (if you have a tank drive setup) and turn for this amount of time and so on and so forth. Now, this is not super accurate when it comes to the field, but it is one way of doing it. This is a very guess and check method, and requires that the robot is placed on the field at the same spot everytime so that everything works out alright.