Inertial navigation systems

[seanwitte]

Originally Posted by Wetzel

In 2003 116 had some sort of internal error correction for auton mode. I belive that a white paper is planed for this.

I was not involved in it, but my breif understanding of it was that it used the gyro and separate electronics to maintain the desired heading when heading up the ramp. It detected angular change. I really should pm Sean and have him give a real answer.

I don't think it really warrants a whitepaper. We used a Basic Stamp 2sx to integrate the gyro and return the relative heading as an analog input to the RC. We soldered an ADC and DAC onto the stamp carrier board so it was a self-contained system. When the robot was placed on the field the pit crew hit a reset button to set the base heading. The base heading was seen by the RC as 127, increasing clockwise and decreasing anti-clockwise. As long as the robot didn't turn too fast it worked like a compass. We used the heading to drive straight and to make repeatable turns. The robot slipped sideways on the ramp a couple of times and it was able to correct and drive to the top. There was also a button on the joystick that, when held down, would lock in the current heading and drive straight. It wasn't necessary to do this externally, but its nice to be able to swap the component between the EDUbot and the full-size robot without making any changes to it.