Hildorfr IR

This time I managed to mount Infra Red distance sensors and a servo on top of Hildorfr. It took some time to make everything work under freeRTOS, which I just recently decided to use, but I guess it was worth the effort. The most important thing is, that both IR sensors and the servo work:)

The mid range IR sensor is mounted on top of the servo, which is located in the front of the vehicle. The close range IR sensor is attached on the right side, just near the front one. The first one is intented to serve as a kind of radar, the other one… Well, at the moment it’s unused, but I’m planning to use it to follow a wall or something like that:)

This configuration didn’t work, until I found out that the servo – which is powered by the same circuit as the microcontroller – caused my ARM to reset. As it would take way too much effort to create a separate circuit for the servo, I decided to insert some capacitors into the power supply – 4 mF did the trick;)

The current program consists of two tasks:

Sweeper – controlls the servo and gathers distance information

Main – implements the logic and controlls the tracks, based on the info gathered by the sweeper

Logic is programmed to avoid the obstacles. The results are… You can see for yourself:) (Hint: Pages[this.id].end().goTo();)

Well, to be honest, I am satisfied that it works – most of the time – , but it certainly needs some kind of a tune-up:)

Things to be done:

Calibrate the servo better – it’s still a little asymmetric, which – together with the specyfics of the IR sensors – results in Hildorfr prefering the left side…

Calibrate the timings better

Make Hildorfr smarter

Photos:

Movies:

In the dormitory’s kitchen
On the corridor