Self-Parking Robot car, Help needed...

[lotus2007]

I am new with robot design, I am planning to build a robot car that can follow a line and leave the line to park itself when it finds a spot that's bigger enough. I planning to use a Atom Basic microcontroller to interface with the motor controller and sensors. I think infrared sensors are good for line following, do not know if it's good for object detecting, which I need for finding parking spot. I am also having trouble finding suitable robot chassis, I do not need anything fancy, the easier to program/operate, the better. I would rather a chassis that can go back and forth(easy parking so I don't have to deal with parallel parking), and left and right(following track), but couldn't find any like that. Anyone knows if th ere are chassis build like that? I went to Pololu.com and found a round robot chassis with two motorized wheels, I took a look at the datasheet for motor controller, it seems to only go back and fourth, no turning. I think I can get it to turn if I could just make one wheel stop, while move the other wheel, but not sure. Also I couldn't find any object infrared sensors online. Maybe there are better way of implementing object sensing, like I said I am new to robot, so any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[blueroomelectronics]

If it's the chassis below it turns just fine. It uses the Tamiya Twin Gearbox similar to the Tamiya Double Gearbox I'll be using in my Mongoose kit. You'll need to buy a dual motor controller for it.
**broken link removed**

 

[bingbinICE]

Give you some stuff of following line robot.

http://elm-chan.org/works/ltc/report.html (Japan)

something of my design
**broken link removed**

**broken link removed**

 

[lotus2007]

Thanks for the help guys. I already made the order of the round chasis from Pololu. I think what's going to be more difficult is the parking part of the design which I have to get the car to park itself once it finds a fittable parking space. I was think is it possible to make the wheels turn 90 degrees to go for the parking spot once it is found?

 

[bingbinICE]

I use webcam to pattern recognise. but it is complex.

I consider, probably you can use a light-emitting diode to indicate the parking spot.

you can use something that like attached file to detect the line and parking spot.

 

[lotus2007]

I found some ir sensors, I need a ir emitter/receiver pair. I found some but not sure if they are compatible
https://www.newark.com/jsp/Optoelec...NKEN/TSUS5200./displayProduct.jsp?sku=33C1878

detector
https://www.newark.com/jsp/Optoelec...KEN/TSOP31238./displayProduct.jsp?sku=09J4517
I don't understand why would they call a ir detector a emitting diode, shouldn't it be receiving diode?

 

[bloody-orc]

from where do you read, that it's an detector?!? I'd say it's more emitter than detector any time...
also pay close attention to the wavelengths of those things. they must match.

 

[lotus2007]

I just found another pair, but it dosen't list the wavelength for the detector, just a range of wavelength.
https://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/s...&catalogId=10001&productId=372964&pa=372964PS

https://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/s...&catalogId=10001&productId=112150&pa=112150PS
Instead of turning 90 degrees I am thinking about doing parallel parking with the robot. How would I go about detecting parking space using them? If it can be done, About how many of those sensors
should I purchase? Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated. .