Where things have gotten a bit out of hand is part two of this. It is really my sons fault, he was looking at our plasma TV the other day and said to me "Dad is that what stuff really looks like?" I didn't know at first what he really meant, he said that the high definition images look better than real life and wanted to know why. I confess I didn't really know why but that I would give it some thought. The next day while driving to a job i was thinking about what he said and saomething dawned on me. It looks better because it is teo dimensional, and the place that his eyes have to focus is on the one plane, so everything is always in focus. But when we look at something in real life, in 3D, we are only ever clearly focused on a region, a particular portion of our view. IF you hold your hand out in front of you near a window, and look at your hand, anythin in your peripheral vision is mostly out of focus. Move your attention to the window frame and your hand goes out of focus, move your attention to the outside and the window and your hand goes out of focus. So we are only ever looking at a smaller portion of anywhere at any one time. Our brain just automagically creates a 3Dimensional image out of what we see, judging how far objects are away by not only knowing how big something is by experience, but also by the fact that our two eyes have to converge on the object (or area) to focus, the math is then approximated in our heads to get a judged distance from what we are looking at. Thus a 3D image is built up in our minds ion a fraction of a second. This is why the HD image on the Plasma looked better than real life to him.
Like anyone who drives a lot in his job, my projects are never far from my mind. I had an inspiration building as an addon to my already out of hand robotic project. How could I use this method to build a 3D map of my surreoundings for my Robot.

What i am trying to do is a two part project really. Initially it was going to be simply an exersize in getting some sort of autonamous robot to wander around an area and not bump into anything. It has been done before and is not really that hard to do. There is planty of other projects to glean ideas from. But, like many things, the tale grew in its telling. I thought it would be nice if my little robot could wander around, not bump into anything and map as it goes. With this we get issues with knowing where the robot is at any given time, and so on. It would be nice to use GPS technology but as I said before, it is an exersize in junk and low cost, so we cant go there. This really onlyleaves dead reckoning to use as a navigation aid. Dead reckoning is fraught with problems and is far from ideal, but it is what I will use.
Funily enough, it is becoming less of a problem the more i think of it. I was tempted to make the assumption that a robot, being computer driven must inherently be acurate in all it does. But the more I thought about it, the more I realises this is not true. We have all wandered along and bumped our shulder on a door, we have all hit a curb at sometime, or bashed our head on the bonnet of a car while checking the oil. So why must our robot be perfect, if we are not. For this reason, i think dead reckoning might be adequate for what I am trying to do.
Anyway, my tea is ready so I will come back to this later.

Well it is something I have always been pretty interested in. One of the prohibitive things has always been the cost factor. If you a re like me, married, kids, house, you have a little trouble justifying spending money on anything that doesn't directly relate to the family. So when you look at some of the robotic stuff being done today, it is done by huge budgets in high tech labs, university workshops and so on. Many of the projects are just too costly for the average person to do, just for the fun of it. So what I am attempting to do is see what I can create, on the minimum possible budget. I will be using houshold stuff whereever possible, old unused bits of junk that most would throw away. I have always prided myself on being able to make something out of nothing so I will see how it goes with robotics.
I guess the first thing is to explain what exactly is the plan of attack. What I am actually trying to make.

Well, i gotta say, I have seen so many people with blogs and I have always wondered what drives a person to right down their thoughts for others to see. I guess the first assumption I guess is that you have to have something interesting to say. Well at the age of 46 and married with kids I am probly about as boring as it gets. None the less I shall create this thing if nothing else, just to see what happens. If nothing else I will have a fine time talking to myself. With that said, lets have at it!!!