Hello there, i am working on a ‘follow mw’ robot.
i have already bought the pololu IR beacon tranceiver pair…
my main problem is that its signals are digital so i cannot make my robot to stay at a safety distance from its user…
in other words i cannot monitor distance measurement from the moving user.
please help any ideas…
i need to keep a safety distance of 1m between my robot and the moving user.
your ideas will be most appreciated.
You are correct that the IR beacons provide direction, but not distance information between a robot and a target. What you need to do is couple the beacon with a front mounted proximity sensor. Ultrasonic sensors work great for this and some are quite inexpensive. Even a cream of the crop ultrasonic sensor only costs around $29. If that’s too much than consider an IR bump sensor which can be made using an IR LED and photo-transistor for less than $5.
Programatically you use something called a subsumption architecture. This is a fancy word which means check your direction sensor to set the motors for a course towards the target, then check the bump sensor, and stop if the bump sensor is on.