hi, we are looking for some lidar or other sensors that we use to find location in the space.
do you have some recommendations ?
Slamtec’s rpidar series is often noted as one to start to use.
Definitely test against polycarb and aluminum. The traditional wisdom is that Lidar and FRC don’t mix well, due to a lot of the environment being shiny or transparent.
Just to make sure you are aware, there are apriltags on the field which can get you location information as well.
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I mean if you don’t mind stretching the budget you can get your hands on a velodyne LiDAR puck and purchase the comput box separately to keep it under the price cap and that gives you fantastic LiDAR, but if you’re just localizing the bot apriltags are the way to go, LiDAR is only really necessary if you want to localize other bots, but that can also be done with ML and a depth camera.
The slamtec Rplidar A1M8 is a great starter Lidar but as other have said it’s not gonna be great for FRC. I use those on test kits at work and they are fine moving at transporting boxes speed at up to 2.5 m/s which is about the realistic safe limit mobile robots can travel at any given time in an industrial setting. That’s still really fast, and it’s fast enough that a cheap spinning Lidar will sometimes not be able to catch up. Big jostling movements like going over bumps or getting hit hard (defense) can also cause the belt between the motor and the laser housing to fall off or slip.
The accuracy is really good on it, but then comes the lack of reflection well off of dark or reflective surfaces. Aluminum (uncoated or power coated), dark color paints and shiny objects all are tough for it to handle. You’ll get really strange readings that might confuse the sensor into seeing infinite range in a given direction.
What we use Lidar for is usually SLAM mapping and navigation. Neither of those are great for FIRST except during autonomous and even then it’s overkill. SLAM is needed in an unknown and unfamiliar environment where things will change dynamically. The field setup and rules for Auton ensure you don’t need to account for shifting obstacles and you don’t need to localize yourself nearly as often. You aren’t traveling hundreds of meters over the course of a half hour. You are moving short distances for 15 seconds. You can get by with April tags and path Weaver.
That was a lot so tldr: Lidar can work, but it’s not worth it with the introduction of AprilTags for localization.
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