movement mapping

[Zigcarruse]

Hello,

I am working on a robotics project and we are using Labview 10 to accomplish this. Currently I am trying to take the GPS signals from our robot's navigation and then map out its location (on a graph or grid) with each update, so that it shows a trail, marking where it was. I tried looking through the forums, but to no prevail. I was wondering if anyone had any experience with this or know any places that have good references on it. Any martials that could help me with this project would be most appreciated.

Thanks

[RoboticsME]

One option is to use the 2D picture control.  Use the draw point or draw line VI to update where the robot has been. (see VI's located in Graphics & Sounds >> Picture functions).

Note that 2D picture control works by adding drawing instructions (as opposed to actually changing the pixel values in the indicator).  Therefore, if you trace the robot's location for a long time over many points, the memory consumed wil grow.  You can get around this by periodically flattening and unflattening the image to a pixmap.

[S_Kamath]

The LabVIEW Robotics Module has an example on Getting NMEA Data and plotting it. While it gets the data from file it should not be difficult to modify it to work directly with the NMEA stream from the GPS device. There are specific drivers for some GPS as well as generic NMEA parsing VIs available in the palettes.

You can download an evaluation at https://lumen.ni.com/nicif/us/evallvrobotics/content.xhtml

[Zigcarruse]

Yeah we are thinking of going with the 2D picture control, and I did get it to make a line based off an x and y value given to it. But the big problem is that I need to somehow either geo-reference the corners so that when I give it a coordinate it goes to the correct pixel, which is made to represent where the robot current is. I’m not sure if there is a better solution out there, but that is all we thought of so far. Not sure how else to do it. Any thoughts / solutions?

Is it also possible within picture control to make a picture within the first picture and make it move along those pixel coordinates?

[RoboticsME]

Hi,

Take a look at: \examples\general\graphs\Plot Images.vi for some ideas on how to plot a picture of the robot along the graph.

Otherwise, I would say that if you have the Vision module, it has better tools for doign things like overlay, moving pictures around, etc.

In terms of converting x,y and cooridinates, it sounds like you just need to be able to convert the Lat/Long in to X,Y values.  I would think that could be straight forward by saying that that image covers a certain range of Lat and Long, which corresponds to a range of X and Y pixel values.

What do you think about some of those ideas?

Cheers,

Karl

[mikealder]

Have a look at http://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/map-display-as-switches/m-p/829179#M376682 for some other ideas on combining GPS data with maps as pictures and controls - Mike