Good use for Sonar Sensors

Technical Sensors
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Hi guys,
I will be starting a VEX team and thought of this idea:
Basically, there will be an ultrasonic distance sensor placed upon a servo, to create a rotating turret. For autonomous, the microcontroller will move the servo and map out all the beanbags it detects, and the one that is closest. It will have encoders to allow the robot to home itself. Basically, the robot will go and pick up the closest game-piece then home itself back at the origin. Then it will calculate a trajectory to get the game piece into the location required. The robot will do this whole thing autonomously.

I have attached a document about what I will be doing

So, what do you guys think?

This post is about this type of object tracking. This will actually be used on vex, though a similar system can be used on FRC. This will allow robots to navigate and pick up game pieces autonomously. However, since this isn’t visual, it wouldn’t easy to integrate this with the shooter, unless you want to calculate the speed at which the frisbees are heading out.

1654F7_02201.pdf (226 KB)


1654F7_02201.pdf (226 KB)

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I’ve done this before on a mobile robot that mapped and explored a maze.

Mounted an ultrasonic and IR rangefinder onto a servo turret. As the robot drove through the maze, I tracked the current position using wheel encoders and then translated all of the mapping values to an absolute position map of the environment. After doing a ~270 degree scan, it would look for the first gap in the walls/objects large enough to drive through. If it ever hit a dead end, it would turn 180 degrees, then rescan.

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Yes, I know it would be possible. However, I am wanting to beat our star VEX team who came fifth in nationals. I want to come First Place! So, how did you do this maze solving? How much RAM did it require?::ouch:: ::ouch:: ::ouch:: ::ouch:: ::ouch::

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