
4.1 Hardware
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recognition algorithm and the proficiency of the robot body
alignment system.
4.1 Hardware
Before discussing how the robot locates cans it is first necessary
to understand how the robot perceives the world. To achieve
good discrimination and a wide field of view we need a sensor
with high resolution. For this reason we decided to use an
optical ranging system. While there are several systems
commercially available, we found that none were suitable for our
application. They were either too large, required too much
power, or were too expensive. Thus, we chose to construct our
own laser ranging system. The system is small enoug ...