I’ve been planning to build a robot to give a tour around my school, but couldnt think of a good way to have the robot navigate the halls along a specific path without any obvious physical traces like a line of reflective tape or something like that.
The general path it’d take would be fixed more or less, but i couldnt figure out how i would account for errors. I’ve been looking into alternate navigation methods but i really dont know enough about it to decide what to take up according to my need.
Is there a way to map a path in my school and have the robot follow it accurately? Or maybe a way to set up a few points along the path where the robot can properly align and orient itself? Should i turn to cv for navigation instead?
I’m a total beginner, just starting out with actual robotics projects after doing LEGO robotics for a long time. I’ve been learning the very basics of raspberry pi and python programming and was hoping to take this up as a challenge. What learning resources would you guys recommend for me as i take up this project?
Hi there,
Tracking the position of a robot indoor is not an easy task.
Neato is doing it with their highly developed APP and a 360 degrees Lidar: https://www.robotshop.com/en/catalogsearch/result/?q=lidar&order=relevance&dir=desc
This is a solution but can be really tough to program. Note that the robot have to play a sequence and needs to remember every room, hall and place of your school.
I don’t know how big is your school but this can be a problem.
Another possibility would be to use beacons to triangulate the position of the robot: https://www.robotshop.com/en/catalogsearch/result/?q=beacons&order=relevance&dir=desc
See the definition of triangulation here to help you understand the system you would have to create: https://www.indoornavigation.com/wiki-en/trilateration-and-triangulation
I hope this help you get started.
Hello @zer012 and welcome to the forum!
I think it’s awesome that you want to do this project as a challenge, that is the best way to learn 
I like the idea of using beacons to triangulate your position, like they do in the video shown in this product description:
But I also think it would be nice if you investigate a little more about LIDARs, computer vision, point cloud and SLAM.
As you mentioned that you are a beginner in robotics, I think this could come in handy
And I think this could also be useful for you
Good luck with your project 