Hey For my Uni final year project I am trying to create a self reverse parking robot. Ive been thinking for months now for all the different ways in which I can do this, and I have kind of settled on using 2 ir seeker sensors and then have the robot position itself using 2 LED's (So essentially Im tracking the 2 LED's using the 2 ir seeker sensors).

It is proving to be harder that I first anticipated!!!!!

Ive been doing it in stages:

Stage 1 - To get the the IR seeker sensors to detect the LED's. (done with alot of help from mightor)

Stage 2 - Work out how to define the LED's Indavidualy so that each of the 2 sensors correspond to its own LED. (i.e. IR sensor 1 to LED 1, IR sensor 2 to LED 2). (not done findind it very hard).

Stage 3 - Right a piece of code that says "if sensor 1 is closer to LED 1 than sensor 2 is to LED 2" then Move towards led 2 "else if sensor 2 is closer to LED 2 than sensor 1 is to LED 1" then move towards LED 1. (not done)

As you cansee Ive got an idea of how to do this but Im having trouble defining the LED's Seperatley so they can be related to there indavidual sensors.

I am using an robocup jr ball to test the sensors until I am confident how im going to define the LED's , at which time I shall whip up a a cirtuit that does the job for bth posts.

Any input or help would be greatly appreciated and you would be sited on my project report (dissertation) of course.

Also if anybody can think of an easier way for me to do the project (usin different sensors of something) then please dont hesitate to suggest this.

Cheers Andy R Nalley

Hey Andy,

Your LED identification code is something you should concentrate on now. You will need to do the following:
Create a circuit that will pulse an IR LED at 10Hz and one at 20Hz. I am not sure how easy this will be for you, as I don't know how familiar you are with electronic circuits. There are 1000s of examples on the Intarwebs, Google is your friend Seeing as you are in Uni, I am sure you'll be able to find someone who can make these for you
As I said before, once you have these two beacons, you will need to write the code to detect them. Setup a loop that will scan the IR Seekers' state at -at least- twice the frequency of your fastest blinker, so that's 40 times per second. You are going to have a tough time distinguishing between the two signals, as you will have to take into account interference and things like that. Another option would be to have both beacons signal intermittently, in other words, have beacon A at 10Hz, blink for 500ms (so 5 blinks), the nothing for 500ms, then have beacon B blink at 20Hz for 500ms (10 blinks), etc. This would make things a lot easier for you

As for other ideas, check this out: http://www.google.coml/search?q=self+parking+car+lego

Regards,
Xander

Thanks for your input, your realy helping me.

This way of doing t is starting to become alot more complex than I first thought. It just seems that my robot is getting more and more simple each time I analyse my new approach.

Im thinking that using 2 IR Seeker sensors may be a bit to hard. What Im thinking is simplifying it so that there is one beacon that has a rubber white strip attached to it. So the robot heads towards the beacon until it hits the white strip which means that it will then do a line following program, parking it perfectley level.

I know this is called into question because the surface around it cant be black. But the actual aim of the project is creating a model to represent its use on caravans in caravan parks (my family owns a caravan storage park). This is relivent because caravan parks use cheap black tarmac so if the strip was white it will pick it up perfectly.

This is the only way I can think of doing it, thats in my knowledge grasp. Im gonna keep looking at different ways nut my project is meant to be more about a problem/solution rather than just building a robot for the sake of it.

I just hope the robot getting more simplified isnt going to fail me.

damn to robots......They drive me crazy.......I should have stuck with engineering!!!!

Additional.....

Ive been looking online for ideas for months and youtube is sod. All I can find is parallel parking robots that people have just taken a program that works of the net and built the robot using a guide. Theres very little to do with what Im trying to achieve.

Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn and damn.

hi,
I don't speak good enough English to understand your specific challenge.

Did you have a look at this - what's different to your project?
http://www.youtube.com/v/O0p43HTbk5E&hl=de&fs=1

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There is loads of that on youtube. Basically thats parrallel parking, working on te basis that there are always 2 cars eiether side of the parking bay.

What I wanna do is create a reverse parking robot that doesnt need other vehicals to loacate the parking space.

Thanks for the input though , allways usefull.