Exploring an unstructured environment

Support Robots
1

Hi,

I’ve just started looking into hobby robotics and have much admired the videos showing the 3pi doing lines and mazes and more so section 4 of the video pages that shows robots with added sensors.

However, I’m more intrigued by the idea of having a robot map out a space (e.g. my basement floor) autonomously. This is a harder problem than any I’ve seen solved and clearly distance sensors would need to be added. Any thoughts whether it is feasible at all with a 3pi? I haven’t looked into this kind of problem yet, but I figure one step is to give the robot a map and have it localize itself. The next phase would be to get the robot to generate its own map from scratch. I have no idea how noisy the available sensor data is; any thoughts on whether it can be done?

I also don’t know anything about the capabilities of the on-board controller. However, I have a raspberry pi that I might be able to bolt on. Has anyone done that yet? I had a crazy thought that a raspberry pi with a webcam might be able to localize itself using video imagery (in addition to range sensors?).

Appreciate any thoughts,
-Steve

2

Hello, Steve.

You might be able to do something with the 3pi, but there are a lot of sensors that can help a lot with navigation that would not be practical to add to it. Some examples would be wheel encoders and laser range finders. I think it is also quite possible that the ATmega328 is not up to the task. Adding a Raspberry Pi and a webcam sounds like it might be possible; I haven’t heard of someone doing that.

- Ryan