The allure of adding sensors

General Discussions
1

Over and over I have found myself distracted by the allure of adding another sensor to my robot.

My recent focus has been to enable my robot to recharge without my assistance. This doesn’t require any more sensors. The current hurdle is to devise a mounting for the electrical contacts on my GoPiGo3 in the exact position needed to allow the bot to back onto a modified iRobot recharge base.

Rather than solve that problem, my mind started thinking about how neat the DI IMU would be, and what I could do with it. The more I learned about the IMU, the more I realized using the IMU is not just a “slap it on and go” thing.

I need to stay focused, for my robot’s sake.

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2

it will be cool to have a automated recharge robot. Is your thought to use IMU to detect magnetic field and have a contact pair

3

No, the IMU was to distract me…

First I have to mount the contacts, then write the “recharged, time to get off” behavior.

I plan is to use the distance sensor to orient a programmed docking sequence, from a starting point of having the robot’s corner in view of the distance sensor.

Next, the robot will have to learn to log and retrace its travels to return to the corner, or use an intelligent search pattern with OpenCV to “recognize” the robot’s corner.