Surveyor Robotics Journal
   



email: support@surveyor.com

Surveyor Corporation home page

Subscribe to a syndicated RSS feed.

Subscribe with Bloglines

Archives
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
Februray 2006
January 2006

        
Wed, 11 Oct 2006
more adjustments to "wander mode" ...

There's a new test version of SRV-1 firmware that has a somewhat different approach to thresholding in "wander mode", using a range of Y, U and V values instead of an averaged sample and fixed threshold range. Initial experiments are promising, so it will be helpful to get feedback from users.

If you try controlling the robot from a console, you can look at the data that the robot is processing in making its navigation decisions. Hit 'w' to initiate "wander mode", and then hit 'S' from time to time to view the "Scans", as seen here -



The top line of each scan is ##Scan - xxxxxxxx, where xxxxxxx shows the open/blocked status of the regions ahead, and the following 80 numbers are the distance in each pixel column to the first non-matching pixel. The minimum possible value is 0, indicating that the pixel column is completely blocked, and the maximum possible is 64, which is the height of each of the 80 pixel columns.

If you want to just look at the numbers in this mode without having the robot driving around, just comment out line #515 (we probably should add a function to disable the motors for testing):

     // set_motor(motor_cmd[tflag], base_speed, &lspeed, &rspeed);

Here are the download links - please post your comments on the Surveyor Robotics Forum:

Note - this code includes all of the "swarm mode" additions, and while we've tried to test all functionality, it is possible that we've broken something from earlier versions, so please let us know over in the robot forum if there are any new problems that this code has introduced.

Posted Wed, 11 Oct 2006 16:15 | HTML Link | see additional stories ...