Sensors

This is where you can find information on different types of sensors, how they function, and how to connect them to your robot! We offer a wide range of sensors. The more sensors used, the better the autonomy will be. Relying on only one type of sensor for all your positioning will work for simple situations, but will probably cause issues for any complex positioning or for any positioning that requires higher precision.

In robotics, sensors can be used to monitor your environment or to determine your robot's position relative to some object. Standard sensors for environment monitoring can range from temperature thermocouples, gas, and radiation. The standard positioning sensors are Sonic and IR for object detection and GPS, gyroscopes, and accelerometers to determine relative location, direction, and airspeed. For ground travel and RPM feedback, a combination of our encoder enabled motors and our encoder buffer board make it incredibly easy to implement your own speed control algorithms and RPM feedback. The encoder can also be used to keep track of the distance traveled, but with skid steer the more you turn/skid the more inaccurate the reading because of the wheel slips/skids resulting in encoder counts, but no relative movement.

• For a complete list of our available sensors, please visit this link (LINK: cat 57).
• Accelerometers, Gyros, GPS, & Compasses: Accelerometers, Gyros, GPS, & Compasses. Measure acceleration and track rotation with these accelerometers, gyroscopes, compasses/magnetometers, and combined inertial measurement units (IMUs) and orientation sensors.
• Contact Sensors: Contact Sensors. Switches and Bumper Switches used to indicated when a physical limit has been reached.
• Current Sensors: An assortment of unidirectional and bidirectional Hall effect-based current sensors. They offer a very low-resistance current path and electrical isolation between the current source and the measuring circuit.
• Force Sensors: Force-sensing resistors (FSRs) are passive components that exhibits a decrease in resistance when there is an increase in the force applied to the sensor allowing you to create a sensor that is able to detect force or pressure.
• Gas Sensors: Gas sensors makes it possible to measure concentrations of gasses such as alcohol, methane, propane, butane, and carbon monoxide.
• Magnetic Guide Sensors: Precision magnetic sensor for detecting and measuring the position of a magnetic track along the horizontal axis, for use in Automatic Guided Vehicles and other Automation applications.
• Optical Sensors - IR, PIR, Photo, & Lasers: Optical IR Sensors & Laser Range Finders. IR distance sensors make it easy to detect and range objects. The laser range-finder is inexpensive, accurate and easy to use with a 240 degrees scan area.
• Sonar Range Finders: Accurately measure distances over a wide range with our assortment of ultrasonic distance sensors from Maxbotix and Devantech.
• Temperature and Humidity Sensors: These sensors measure the humidity of the air and can measure the temperature. Great features for your microcontroller project.