daNI following a moving object using it's ultrasonic sensor

[daNI_Platoon]

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone would be able to point me in the right direction/ help me out.

Is it possible to program daNI to follow a moving object throught the use of it's ultrasonic sensor?

I ask as i aim to (hopefully) create a platoon of daNI using this program.

So far I've seen an awesome example of a daNI platoon from the UCLA Mechanical Eng. department, found here:

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/12902

If i read correctly, UCLA used an infrared sensor to get the daNI to follow each other.

My project aims to have a lead daNI that follows a specified path (or even just a straight line) and the following daNI will use the program I'm requesting further info for.

Regardless, if anyone could share any knowledge, links, or example code to kick me in the right direction, I would be very thankful.

Many Thanks,

Mike ^^,

[Ali_H]

Hi,

I am looking for the same kind of information. I am doing a project to do an adaptive cruise control using dani robot with labview. However one part of the project is to get dani to follow an object then looking into adaptive cruise control.

Regards

Ali

[niNickC]

Hello,

I think the examples in that link are using the ultrasonic sensor, you can see the little sensor moving left to right on top and they have placed a sheet of paper to get a good 'bounce'.

Getting a daNI to follow in a straight line should be fairly straightforward as you can get a distance and use that as feedback for your motors. I think using daNI's onboard sensor to follow a curved path would be quite difficult. In the linked video you can see that the robots are quite slow as they have to perform an entire sweep of their sensor before they can act. Traditional following systems use 2 sensors placed a distance apart from which you can measure the intensity of a sent signal and therefore calculate a rough position.

In terms of material, the courseware is pretty good for getting you started with daNI:

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/epd/p/id/6491

Otherwise a browse of the Robotics community is a great place to go:

https://decibel.ni.com/content/community/zone/labviewrobotics

(this might be of some interest: https://decibel.ni.com/content/docs/DOC-18154)

Hope this helps.

[Ali_H]

Hello Nick,

Thanks for your reply for the question above, that was helpful indeed.

In my project to design an ACC using fuzzy logic for a DaNi robot. I will be provieded with a DaNi and the labview version that is compatible with DaNi. providing that I have a DaNi, do I need to have a Transfer Fuction for DaNi in order to design the ACC fuzzy logic in Labview?

Kind Regards

Ali

[niNickC]

Hello Ali,

I am not sure what an ACC is?

That said, I have not come across any listed transfer functions for the robot before.

Kind Regards,