Infrared Signals to the Robot

Introduction

The obstacle detection on the robot is performed through the use of infrared LEDs and infrared phototransistors on the front of the robot.

It is possible to turn off the infrared LEDs on the front of the robot with the obstacleEmitters command.

One use of this would be to prevent them from interfering with the phototransistors so you could read them for other purposes. Here, we list a couple of ideas for you to implement based on the concept of turning them off.

Remote Control

By reading the IR Sensors on the front of the robot, but not using them for obstacle avoidance, you can potentially control the robot with a standard infrared remote control. Doing this will require you to master portions of the Arduino Library and functions of the Atmega 328 microcontroller that we have not introduced in the tutorials, so this poses, potentially, a significant challenge in implementation. We have an infrared remote that you can borrow for these purposes.