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6.5
Braitenberg's vehicle
At this stage, you have a good understanding of motors and sensors functionality.
In the next step we will combine these two modules. Let's open both panels (Motors and
Sensors), but do not start them. This way, you will be able to watch, at the same time,
data issued from the sensors and those send to the motors. Open the instrument called
Braitenberg3c. Now your screen displays also the following panel:
Figure 25: Braitenberg’s vehicle panel: 3 sliders defining the sensibility thresholds.
Each of these three sliders defines the sensibility to the obstacles of a given group
of sensors:
• “Front” corresponds to the central front sensors,
• “45 degrees” corresponds to the lateral front sensors,
• “90 degrees” corresponds to the sensors on the side of the robot.
Start the application by clicking on the arrow. It is not necessary to click on the
double arrow in the present case. The sensibility can be modified by moving the cursors
or writing directly the desired values. Koala now moves, avoiding bumping into obstacles. Test different sensibilities on its behaviour. This control structure is inspired from
the work of V. Braitenberg [Braitenberg84].
Note that this VI uses the “Motors” and “Sensors” modules as sub-VIs. One of the
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