Our robot has five distance sensors (VL53L0X ToF sensors): three at the front (facing ahead and +/–45 degrees), and two at both sides (facing left and right). These sensors are great for things like wall following, but can we use them for determining the robot’s position and orientation inside the arena?
This blog originally started with an introduction to our plans for Pi Wars 2020 – Disaster Zone.
This is about an unexpected but probably unavoidable, and hopefully somewhat interesting, distraction.
In the last few weeks, we have been making legs, physical and virtual. We wanted to experiment with the ratios of the different leg sections to see which would yield the best results. We wanted the robot to make smaller steps, and therefore be more manoeverable, as the speed could still remain the same via the motors without having to take long steps.
We already had a robot that could walk (more or less), but now to improve it, we are taking a few steps back: in fact, we started by removing the legs completely! This might sound somewhat backwards, and it definitely felt that way for a while…