Floor-roving autonomous robot

[technical]

Hi all. Here's a brief video of the EV3 floor roving robot I've been working on for the past few days. It's pretty crude but can go a long time without getting stuck. It makes use of one distance scanner in three positions by using a clutched IR sensor, has two bumper sensors that are padded by shock absorbing springs to reduce impact on the touch sensors. Behind the bumper is mounted a color sensor on the front that is used to measure near distance and ambient light. It appears to flash because it's rapidly switching between measuring these two things, With this sensor it can detect objects near to the ground that the main sensor peers over, and also back out of shadows so it doesn't get under furniture.

Working on the software has been the long part as there is much debugging to do and each test run can take a long time depending on what I'm trying to improve. It makes decisions based on distances to its surroundings on three sides, so if it senses it's coming up on something in front of it, or a bumper strike is detected, it will choose to turn left or right depending on which direction is more open.

[oracid]

What do you think of the idea to memorize the location of objects and thus to evaluate the probability of finding an object in the next pass.

In this way, it could decide the best way to get from one point to another.

Not easy, I presume...

[technical]

Not easy, I presume...

Correct