That my friend, is the right question*. So I've been pondering about purpose. Its been an interesting exercise experimenting with some different types of object detection and avoidance with the most successful version using ultrasonic sensors.
So I have a robot that can move around the house and not run into things. It's cool but there is no purpose to what it does, aside from avoidance. In order to give the robot a purpose or a reason to move, I'm going to have it move toward a sound source (and avoid obstacles on the way).
I'm also going to mount the ultrasonic sensor on a pan&tilt servo so it can figure out the best way to get out of a corner. Another addition will be a current sense to detect high current draws if it does run into something.
I have the pan&tilt assembly, just waiting for the current sense. I'll also purchase two Arduino sound modules that output both raw audio and sound pressure readings. This will allow the robot to detect and track towards/follow a sound source. It will use the ultrasonic sensor for object avoidance in combination with current sense.
I'll keep this blog uptodate with progress of the experiments.
*To paraphrase a quote from the movie AI.
