The robot looks great. Sorry I haven’t been monitoring comments as of late, but I’m finally getting back to work on electronics experimentation and I’m working on some posts. I have unboxed everything and have set up a great workbench with all my parts and what not.

The robots look really nice. Are you writing up your project experience anywhere, or would you like to? Send me an email: chris at robotishappy.com.

- Chris

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3XzdJa_PiA

Guillaume

Thanks for the reply.

I received my Pololu beacon pair last month and I could test it on my robot. The range of the IR beacon is really impressive and much better than the 20″ feet announced on the website.

Anyway I have implemented the beacon on my robot but I just get the orientation of the other beacon (North, East, South and West), no way to get the distance between the 2 devices. So I will have to trust the US sensor to avoid the collision with the leader.

I design just a simple algorithm (not C code) for the ATOM-pro PIC (my robot’s controller). And the first observation are that it can reach the other beacon –> that is a win =)

What about you ? Have you made some progress on your project or it is still boxed up ?

Byebye

Guillaume

The voltage seemed like enough. I could get at least 25 feet away from the base and the robot would find it just fine. For me it was just that operating the motors, arduino and ir beacons was more than one 9v power supply could handle.

I’m not sure about distance. I found that It was easier to determine direction than distance in this project. However, determining distance wasn’t my goal. With some experimentation, I think it’s possible, but you may need to check on the Pololu forums to see how others achieved it. I would hook up my robots and run a few tests, but everything is boxed up (I just recently moved) and I was rolling my own motor shield before I moved (which wasn’t working quite right).

Good luck. Let me know how you fair.

- Chris

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I’m doing an MSc and my thesis is about path following. I just bought the Pololu Beacon (hopefully i’ll receive it next week) to achieve a path following algorithm. I’m going to implement the first beacon on a RC car (Leader) and the second one on an autonomous robot (Follower).

I saw that you used a 9v battery for the IR beacon, is that enough ? I mean the Voltage range is 6-16V and maybe the IR signal range could be higher if we use 15V battery, what do you think about ?

Another question: the IR beacon gives the direction of the leader (+- 25°) right, but what about the range of the IR LEDs and sensor. I mean is it possible to determine the distance between the two beacon just from the output signal of the IR sensor ? Is there any kind of signal proportionality from the distance ?

I am asking this because I would like to try to implement a fuzzy logic controller with the bearing/distance as input and velocity/angular velocity as output.

Thanks and good job by the way =)

Guillaume