With the rebuild complete, we can finally move on to fine tuning the code for the events. John had a great weekend here, with working code for the proximity alert.
The robot uses optical sensors to spot the wall – we’re using A to D converters on the Arduino to read the amount of reflected IR light. Away from the wall, virtually no light is reflected. As you get closer, the reflection gets brighter. The trick is to decide at what level you should stop. We have multiple sensors on the front so that if the robot doesn’t approach the wall perfectly straight on, one of the side sensors will still spot the wall and stop us before collision.
The next task in the tuning will be to test many times and against different types of wall – that’ll tell us what sort of repeat-ability we have – which will be key to getting a good result on the day.