encoder based navigation

@davee wrote:
Robots that actually do something useful clearly should be a general aim, and I applaud your efforts.

I am only trying to duplicate what more talented people have done. I am not inventing the wheel, I am interested in making one if that makes sense?  It was the reason I first joined the forum to follow Bill's robot build.

I think @Inq has a fairly solid case for choosing stepper motors in his application,

Indeed I understand that and he has shared his knowledge and experience with stepper motors and many other things.

I think some of the discussions, studies, etc. that Inq and others have contributed to, are also attempts to look to the future.

Indeed I understand that also. There are those that tackle hard problems and there are people like me that just duplicate the work of others out of interest and a way of understanding what they have done. Before taking an interest in some hobby programming I used to love building electronic projects and reading how they worked. Back then in the analog days I even did a course in color tv repair but decided I wasn't that interested in being a repair man all I wanted was an understanding of how the magic happened.

Sometimes, when developing something, it is helpful to have an aim like speed, not necessarily because it is essential, but it can provide a focus to optimise.

There are competitions for how fast a little robot can zip through a maze which means the hardware/software is pushed to the limits. Super fast actions are one of the useful characteristics of machines.

My bit about speed was actually with reference to one of your posts.

A vacuum cleaner needs to be fast enough but its main aim is to vacuum the dirt or clean the tiles effectively. I am not all that interested in building such a machine. My interest was only in duplicating its ability to navigate as that is the basis of any autonomous robot. They are however a good source of cheap parts for a little experimental robot base. Ideally I would just use an electric wheel chair as some have done as a base as there is no way I could buy the parts as cheaply. Economies of scale.

A 1 mile per hour vacuum cleaner might be fine, but even it needs to do its job efficiently without being an annoying buzzing object that is always in the way.

My wife loves her cheap little robot vacuum cleaner. It has a name and is spoken to as if alive the way some talk about their cars 🙂  It is not one of the smart robots and thus is always getting itself into trouble. It is an annoying buzzing object but I am not allowed to disassemble it 🙂

Best wishes, John