I'm trying to use the ardupilot setup to control an unmanned ground vehicle :D:D:D:D:D:D!
I was going through much of the documentation but still couldn't find the answer to a little question of mine.
Does the robot not need to know it's orientation to the World (north, west, south, east)?
I mean, hypothetically, if the robot goes North to approach its waypoint and the next waypoint is say 300 ft to the East, doesn't it have to know where East is?
If so, which hardware lets the robot know it's "orientation"? the GPS module? An stand-alone orientation sensor? The ardupilot board? eeeek!
Thank in advance guys, this stuff is off-the-walls.
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I'm beginning to get a hold of how all this works. The robot begins to move because it's "lost" two gps coordinates are used by the gps module to calculate heading.
The gps will tell the robot to go, let's say "25 degrees to the right from current heading" or "North 25 degrees South" for 60 ft or so.
Then the gyro is used to calculate those actual 25 degrees, or neg yaw, rather than have the robot just randomly turn and go.
Here's the next question.
How can I integrate the new hardware (gyro) with Jordi's Arduopilot 25 code?!
Might you have some source code that I can study?
Also. Is the gyro absolutely necessary? Can't the robot ever-so-randomly turn NorthEast and go, then auto correct itself by the new (yet slightly incorrect) heading?
I'm way in over my head :)
Thanks a bunch though.
I have used a single gyro and a GPS, without magnetometers, to steer and navigate an R/C truck. In fact, that is how I got started in this hobby, it was my first "baby step". There is a neat bit of logic to make it work.
If the truck is not moving, it does not matter that you do not know which way it is pointed. Once it starts moving, you will know soon enough.
So, here is what I did with my first project: I used a single gyro to provide negative yaw rate feedback. This stabilized the steering, and kept the truck from turning too fast, and smoothed over the errors from GPS. Then, I used course over ground information from the GPS to steer the truck. When the truck was not moving, the wheels would twitch back and forth. But once it started rolling, the gyro would smooth things out, and the truck would steer just fine.
I still have the truck, and the first board that I made, with one gyro and a GPS, and I take it out once in a while in the summer to the parking lot of a local community college. It is programmed to trace an ellipse. Its fun to watch it start up, it starts in a random direction, but once it gets moving a little bit, it straightens right out, and goes racing around.
The ellipse is defined by two points, which I choose to be the locations of a couple of street lights.
Best regards,
Bill
Does anybody know of anybody who has used an "often-stationary" gps navigates robot? Hopefully a car? :)
Maybe a blog?