Color Seeking Robot?

Community General Discussions
1

Hey, Im new here and am about to build my first robot with a group of two or three others as part of a competition, which in turn is part of a unit Im doing at uni this semester (2nd year Engineering). Basically I need to have two devices, one which starts on the corner of an "L" shaped course, and the other at one end. The one on the end needs to start with a baton, pass it to the other device, which travels to the other end. Only problem is one device has to be purely mechanical.

First issue I thought of was finding the "mechanical" device with the robot that starts with the baton , since simply lining it up wouldn't be reliable enough. I was thinknig maybe a red square or something that the robot could navigate towords ? Would this be possible with a simple sensor or would it require a small camera and significant amounts of processing ?

If thats not feasible, does anyone know of another way to "home" in on something that doesnt use electricity on that device ?

Cheers, harrison.

2

There is a software called

There is a software called RoboRealm. I have used it, and can safely say it works extremely well. All you need to do is use TTL communication to connect either an MCU connectted to a motor driver, or the serial port of a motor driver (with motors and power) to the COM port on your computer, and its a very simple GUI, just click which features you want. I highly reccommend it. However, it is more expensive, and bulkier, considering you need a computer to use it. If you want wireless, you can use an XBee radio module (I did this in mine).

 

If you don’t want that be aware that there are three things when looking for electronics:

 

1. convienence

2. cheapness

3. works well

 

You can only have two of these three