Hello,
My group is working on a robot and I am looking for ways to do localization. This is for a competition and therefore there are certain restrictions that we have. This excludes the possibility of using Stargazer as it was originally designed but I was hoping we might be able to adapt it to our situation.
The arena that we compete in is approximately 4m by 7.5m. We are allowed to put a beacon or target in the middle of only one of the short walls ±0.8m. We are hoping to be able to determine our location, (x,y), and our orientation (theta) from StarGazer mounted horizontally (or some other sensor). There is a possibility of significant dust looming around (we are hoping to keep this to a minimum but there could be other robots that create the dust).
Given our arena setup, we would need to be able to get location and orientation within the following ranges:
-55° < phi < 55° (where phi is the angle from the short wall normal to the robot position vector, see image below)
0 < r < ~7m (where r is the distance from the origin, aka middle of short wall, to the robot)
So, I am asking to see if this setup (a horizontally mounted Stargazer with target on the wall) would be feasible. Because this system was designed to work with targets on a ceiling (aka fixed height), I’m unsure if using it in the manner described (where our ‘r’ would be the ‘height’ and would be variable).
I’ve attached a really crude drawing of the parameters I’m trying to get. If I can get r, phi, and theta (theta could be relative to phi instead of relative to long wall direction) then that would be great.
Also, the user guide says it’s tolerant of sunlight and other IR sources but to what extent? If we had to, we could replace the target with some IR LEDs maybe if illuminating the target from afar is not sufficient.
I apologize if some of that was confusing. Just let me know what I can add or clarify.
Thanks.