I wanted to see how accurate my bot is at this time. I took the output from the PID tests I did (see the graph below) and added odometry calculations and plotted the X and Y coordinates based on the data.
As you can see for 36" of travel my bot is off about .04". What else does this show ... that my left wheel leads the right wheel. Most interesting to me is that the the worse occasions of this steer is during velocity ramps. I may need to rethink my PID loop or add another component that can correct for this "steer". Then again, with an 8" diameter bot 40 thousandths of an inch doesn't seem that much ;)
I'm still working on my Java interface. I have made some progress (like getting the serial ports to enumerate and populate a JComboBox, redesigned the GUI layout) but I still need to get the serial listener portion to connect and communicate. I haven't had a big enough block of time to sit down and get my head around it though.
Onward,
Jay
