Yaw sensors: Can we use it to tell us if the robot is going directly up
>the ramp? Suppose our robot does not touch the bottom of the ramp at 0
>degrees (which would allow it to go straight up the ramp), Suppose it
>touched the bottom of the ramp at 45 degrees, would the yaw sensor give us
>the math to tell us what angle we were at?
Does anybody know of a device that will give us this input?
It would be like a level in two directions setting limit switches. Or maybe we could make something out of a level and potentiometers???
You could use the yaw rate sensor (aka, the Gyro) to do this. It would tell you when you were changing angles, like at the bottom and top of the ramp. On the ramp itself, the gyro would return a neutral (127) response.
I take it you are talking about left/right angle up the ramp. You could use a gyro to find your angle relative to your starting position, but its accuracy is not guaranteed. There are many threads about gyros / yaw rate sensors / integrating them that you can search for for more info.