Happy to hear what you think

Illai

Hi, My name is Illai and I am a ME student. I have a task to program my Robot to identify a black pole, then to approach it, clap 3 times with the gripper kit and then to grab the pole. I can use IR Leds, Photoresistors, and Sharp IR sensors.

I would love to hear your suggestions and thoughts
Illai

Mike Green

You didn't say, but I'm assuming that you're talking about a BoeBot with the matching gripper kit. Have you looked at the documentation available? How big is the pole? What's the initial distance to the pole?

Photoresistors are not going to be very useful. They're good for sensing ambient light levels.

You will need to become familiar with the "What's a Microcontroller?" tutorial, "Robotics with the BoeBot", and "IR Remote for the BoeBot Robot". All of them are available here if you don't have them.

Illai

The pole is about 20 cm height. the bottom half is a round cylinder shape of about 3-4 cm diameter, and the upper half has a diameter of about 10 cm. So I thing I will lift the grippers and grab it in its wider portion.

The position of the pole is arbitrary. The lab assistant will move it from time to time. What I need to do is locate it, and track it down and follow until I am next to it. I thought to do it using the IR Leds, like the line follower, however, I think that for spotting the black pole at first the distance will be confusing, and the IR Leds will detect zone 5 no matter what, since the item will be too far.

erco

The Sharp IR distance measuring sensors work fairly well sensing black objects: http://www.junun.org/MarkIII/datasheets/GP2D12_15.pdf

But you may have to hunt a while for the pole, depending how far away it is.