Page 155 - The Definitive Guide to Building Java Robots

Preston_5564C04.fm Page 136 Wednesday, October 5, 2005 7:22 AM

136 CHAPTER 4 ■ SENSORS

Once the connections to your sensors and microcontrollers are made, use the sensors
listed in the following bullets to give your robot some understanding of its environment.
• Dinsmore 1490 Compass: Four I/O; 45-degree accuracy compass.

• Devantech CMPS03 Compass: Single I/O; 2-degree accuracy compass.
• PNI Corporation Vector 2x Compass: Four I/O; 2-degree accuracy compass.
• Lynxmotion Single Line Detector: Good for line following or reading encoders.

• Bump Switches: Emergency stop sensors.
• Sharp GP2D15 infrared proximity sensors: Good for short-range proximity detection.

• Sharp GP2D02 distance infrared sensor: Short-range infrared distance sensor.
• Devantech SRF04 sonar: Good medium-range sonar.
• Polaroid 6500 Ranging Module and Instrument Grade Transducer: Long-range high-
power sonar.
The three Stamp programs created were

• compass.bs2: Showed how to connect to the three compasses.
• switch.bs2: Showed how to get readings from one or more logical switches.

• distance.bs2: Showed how to get distance readings from three types of distance sensors.
The four Java classes created were
• CompassStamp.java: This class is designed to work with the compass.bs2 program.

• Compass.java: This class showed how you could model a specific sensor rather than
create a CompassStamp for accessing it.

• SwitchStamp.java: This class is designed to work with the switch.bs2 program.
• DistanceStamp.java: This class is designed to work with the distance.bs2 program.

Now that I have discussed the basics of how to get your robot to move and gather basic
sensor data it's time to work exclusively with the PC. In the next chapter I will talk about text to
speech and voice recognition, but of which are done best with a PC.

97022d2480fe4a63cfdfa123a6e70098