boe-bot mapping w/ eeprom

roadrunner3g

·I have set up my boe-bot with wiskers and IR headlight navigation for atonomous control. also i put an RC radio control unit on for added control. i am getting ready to put wheel decoders on the wheels and whant to know if i can use the remaining memory of the BS2 chip for mapping the enviroment? IE.. start at one point and wonder around a maze or something, and when the eeprom reaches a set (full) point it can go back to the start point where the bot started?
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roadrunner3g@hotmail.com

Andy Lindsay (Parallax)

Yeah, the Micromouse maze is an example of an easy one because it's separated into equal size cells, each the size of a hallway in both dimensions. Let's say you've got an 8X8 cell maze. That's 64 cells. Each cell has four sides, and they can be represented by four bits, N, W, E and S (assuming N is the direction the Boe-Bot is traveling when it enters the maze). A fifth bit should be useful for denoting which cells have been visited and which have not. For each cell the Boe-Bot visits, it should: set the visited bit, set each bit on the sides it detects walls and clear bits with openings into other hallways. 64 bytes doesn't sound that bad, but it'll be nice to use so little program space because there are other tasks, such as shifting the N, W, E, S reference each time you make a turn, navigation, etc.

There are some really cool encoder apps on the Boe-Bot Digital Encoder Kit page. It's got docs, and a Boe-dar mapping software download. I think this takes you into the realm of magnitude and direction. Combined with some kind of feedback (maze walls, electrical tape lines), the Boe-Bot should be able to back track.