Hi, I am currently working on a robot capable of finding a charging base,I am using the pololu ir beacons to find my way to the base, what im doing is rotating the robot until the north pin changes indicating that the front of the robot is facing the base, but this is not accurate enough, I was wondering if you have some tips or algorithms that I can follow to obtain more accurate results. Thanks
It sounds like the north side of the beacon is pointing directly forward - is that right? If so, one thing you could try is turning the beacon on your robot by 45 degrees, so that the northeast side of the beacon is in front. This way, when you are close to the correct angle, you should have a more precise idea of which way to go: if you see the base on the N side, veer left; if you see it on the E side, veer right. This should let you head pretty much directly toward your base.
Do you have any pictures of your setup? I’ve always wanted to build an auto-recharging robot, but never really thought through all of the details. It would be interesting to see how you going to make the actual charging connection, if you’ve gotten to that point.
Thanks thats a great idea and I will try it, as soon as I assemble the charging station I will post some pictures of it, the charging system will be through antennas on the top and the bottom of the robot like some sort of bumping cart system.