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A supply store for people who want to build robots, electronic gadgets, kinetic art or anything else that moves, beeps or flashes. | |
Sensors |
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| Sensors provide your robot with information about its environment. Different sensors tell your robot about sights, sounds, pressures, temperatures and many other characteristics of the world around it. In many cases sensor components provide "data" when what you want is "information". For instance, a sonar component may report that an echo came back in .05ms when what you really want to know is that a robot is charging you from two feet away. In some cases the volume of data from sensor components is more than can be handled by a robot controller -- too much data can be as useless as no data at all. Because of this, many of sensor products are actually "smart" subsystems with specialized logic to evaluate the data stream and simplify programming your robot's main controller. When considering sensors, your first step is to identify what you want your robot to sense and how quickly and reliably you want want to acquire that information. While "I want to know everything, right now, without error" sounds like a good specification, it probably isn't achievable and it definitely wouldn't be affordable. All practical sensors have definite limits of accuracy, range, resolution and repeatability. Each little increase in performance requires a large increase in cost so you will often accept what you can afford rather than insist on what you would like. While sensors are warranted to meet their specifications, they aren't guaranteed to do what you want in the way you want. While an IR distance sensor may be 99% accurate in the testing lab, your results may be less perfect in a competitive environment when your sensors may get confused by random reflections, your opponents sensors or even intentional interference. In order to be fully effective, you may need to compare the results from multiple sensors and/or filter the data to ignore results that seem inconsistent. As with every part of your robot, maximum effectiveness requires careful evaluation of real-world results and fine-tuning of your robot's circuits and program. This is not a "Plug And Play" hobby! When evaluating sensors, you want to know the following:'
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The content on this page was updated on 10/10/2004