SensorDocumentation¶
Description¶
- The Scout sensor package fuses short to long range sonar with short range IR sensors and LED reflectance sensors to provide feedback about the robots' environment. Commercially available off-the-shelf components were used where possible. The sensors were chosen based on range, accuracy, and repeatability characteristics.
- A popular rangefinder among low-cost robots is the Sharp Infrared sensor family. These are decent entry-level devices but suffer from interference issues (between sensors) and noise issues (dirty power) all of which make the readings from these sensors very unstable and thus unreliable. Colony has made extensive use of these sensors in the past but has now upgraded to more stable sonar sensors from Maxbotix.
- Scout still employs a set of IR rangefinders, but these output a digital signal (high/low) instead of an analog voltage. There is some hysteresis around the 10cm trigger threshold but these sensors are otherwise very stable.
SENSORS¶
References¶