This chapter introduced the first sensor system for the BOE Shield-Bot, and allowed the robot to roam around on its own and navigate by touch. The project built on skills acquired in the last chapter, and employed a variety of new ones:
Electronics
- Building normally open, momentary, single-pole, single-throw, tactile switch circuits
Programming
- Using the Arduino language’s pinMode and digitalRead functions to set a digital I/O pin to input and then monitor the pin’s input state
- Declaring and initializing global variables
- Nesting function calls
- Using if…else statements to direct program flow based on sensor input states
- Using three levels of nested if statements
Robotics Skills
- Autonomous robot navigation based on sensor inputs
- Using a simple example of artificial intelligence so the autonomously roaming BOE Shield-Bot can tell if it’s stuck in a corner, and exit
Engineering Skills
- Subsystem testing again—build that good habit!
- Using an indicator LED to visibly display the state of a system input
- Using an indicator LED to visibly display program flow