I’ve decided to set a goal of blogging about my project progress at least once a week. I get so enthralled with code and such that I set aside blogging about it.
Week Status:
This past week was spent working on the serial read and parsing functions and now working on the website.
Next Week Goals:
I have a robotics meeting coming up in one week and a half so I really need to spend the time to work on motor control. Forward and backward works pretty good. I wish the sensor detected objects better but I need to do some testing on the field of view for each sensor. My main problem is finding an efficient way to turn. The impact on how much power I need to turn a certain distance is dependent upon if I am driving the carpet or tile. This is where I am thinking the wheel encoders will help.
I have tired a few ways of turning and haven’t figured out the best way. I have tired slowing down the side or the other or reversing the opposite side. Now that I have better batteries I can push more power to the motors when turning. I think another thing that might help is to have individual motor control which I currently do not have. They are wired in parallel. For it’s final design, I am thinking of building a high power motor controller myself that can control 4 motors.
Please post your ideas or ways you have tried to have a robot turn that doesn’t have steering.