Are we given sufficient sensors in the kit?

[Nucks]

I'm not clear myself what a gyro sensor is, from what I've read and looked through, its some rotation sensor of some sort?
Anyone want to help clarify this for me?

[Mike Betts]

Originally Posted by Nucks

I'm not clear myself what a gyro sensor is, from what I've read and looked through, its some rotation sensor of some sort?
Anyone want to help clarify this for me?

In robotics, it is properly called a yaw rate sensor. It's output is proportional to the velocity if angular rotation rather than the acceleration of other G sensors. This means that there is one less integration required to determine angle versus the double integration of an accelerometer required to give Cartesian coordinate position.

The reason that a YRS give velocity rather than acceleration is that is uses the Coriolis effect in its design.

Having said all this, you have enough info to Google away. If you have more questions after some investigation, fire away...

[Doug G]

Originally Posted by Nucks

I'm not clear myself what a gyro sensor is, from what I've read and looked through, its some rotation sensor of some sort?
Anyone want to help clarify this for me?

Usually their called "angular rate sensors". We got one last year from Digi-Key, I think it was the Analog Devices ADXRS150, get the version that has the Evaluation Board with it. It basically registers a voltage change when it undergoes an angular acceleration. If you integrate angular acceleration, you can determine the amount of angle it has turned. This is more useful than dead reckoning or counting wheel / tooth rotations since it depends only on what is happening physically to the robot. Dead reckoning and wheel encoding depends on the wheels not slipping and not hitting anything in its way.

Now has anyone checked to see if the linear accelerometer that is included in the kit have a high enough resolution to be useful? The spec sheet didn't seem to convince me.