Results
figure 2
The Mousebot can detect and avoid obstacles with the left and right bump sensors. It can drive around a room with many obstacles such as chairs, tables, and people and not get stuck easily. The Ultrasonic Sensor component does not work so we are ordering a new functioning one. The bumpers get stuck on the tires sometimes, which make it really easy to make the Arduino think that the Mousebot has hit something. To avoid this, the Mousebot travels at only approximately one third of its top speed.
Discussion:
The bump sensors can miss objects that are a little higher than the bump bars and therefore hit the mounts of the limit switches or the mounts of the Ultrasonic Sensor as shown in figure 2. This means that the rover could possibly get stuck by hitting something that was higher than the bump sensors but lower than the top of the Mousebot so it would be trying to go forward but actually staying still because it cannot detect that it is stationary. The way that this could be resolved in future trials would be to integrate an accelerometer in the Arduino. Then just program the Arduino to stop, back up, and turn around if the accelerometer is saying that the rover isn’t moving when none of the other sensors have tripped. The Ultrasonic Sensor is not functional at the moment, but if it was, it would be implemented in the Mousebot. The only problem that is foreseen is that the Ultrasonic Sensor will only detect how close the bump sensor wires are and not the actual ground. So the Ultrasonic Sensor would not actually pick up on any changes in the ground level in front of the Mousebot, but only changes in the bump sensor wires. Other things that could make this project better would be to add more sensors such as an Opencv camera and IR sensors.An OpenCV camera is a camera and its software that can recognize certain shapes and colors. We did not use this because it takes a lot of code and power than an Arduino Uno could not provide. It can also be expensive to obtain the correct software and code. IR, or infrared, sensors could have been used as well. They work very similarly to how the Ultrasonic works, but using IR waves. The reason why these were not implemented was that when outside, sometimes the sun can greatly affect the input of the sensors, so they would not be very accurate.
The Mousebot can detect and avoid obstacles with the left and right bump sensors. It can drive around a room with many obstacles such as chairs, tables, and people and not get stuck easily. The Ultrasonic Sensor component does not work so we are ordering a new functioning one. The bumpers get stuck on the tires sometimes, which make it really easy to make the Arduino think that the Mousebot has hit something. To avoid this, the Mousebot travels at only approximately one third of its top speed.
Discussion:
The bump sensors can miss objects that are a little higher than the bump bars and therefore hit the mounts of the limit switches or the mounts of the Ultrasonic Sensor as shown in figure 2. This means that the rover could possibly get stuck by hitting something that was higher than the bump sensors but lower than the top of the Mousebot so it would be trying to go forward but actually staying still because it cannot detect that it is stationary. The way that this could be resolved in future trials would be to integrate an accelerometer in the Arduino. Then just program the Arduino to stop, back up, and turn around if the accelerometer is saying that the rover isn’t moving when none of the other sensors have tripped. The Ultrasonic Sensor is not functional at the moment, but if it was, it would be implemented in the Mousebot. The only problem that is foreseen is that the Ultrasonic Sensor will only detect how close the bump sensor wires are and not the actual ground. So the Ultrasonic Sensor would not actually pick up on any changes in the ground level in front of the Mousebot, but only changes in the bump sensor wires. Other things that could make this project better would be to add more sensors such as an Opencv camera and IR sensors.An OpenCV camera is a camera and its software that can recognize certain shapes and colors. We did not use this because it takes a lot of code and power than an Arduino Uno could not provide. It can also be expensive to obtain the correct software and code. IR, or infrared, sensors could have been used as well. They work very similarly to how the Ultrasonic works, but using IR waves. The reason why these were not implemented was that when outside, sometimes the sun can greatly affect the input of the sensors, so they would not be very accurate.