Chapter 3. Adding Sensors to Your Tracked Vehicle
Now that your platform can move around, you'd want to add some sensors to avoid or track barriers or other objects. Sensors can also tell you the direction in which you are going. Adding sensors will give a sense of direction and intelligence to your robot.
In this chapter, you will learn the following:
- Using sonar sensors to find the distance to an object
- Using Infrared (IR) sensors to find distance to an object
- Some basic path planning techniques for your robot
Basics of sensors
There are many different kinds of sensors. There are sensors that measure distance, temperature, wind strength, and direction. The list is almost endless. In almost every case, the sensor will take some sort of measurement and then turn it into a voltage that the BeagleBone Black can measure and programmatically respond to. There are many different interfaces for these measurement devices; over the next few chapters, you'll explore many of them. But...
