Advanced Concepts

The concepts in this section aren't required to make a functioning robot, but they can make your robot extremely efficient and precise, a must if you want to make large scale autonomous routines.

Control Theory

From Wikipedia:

Control theory is a field of control engineering and applied mathematics that deals with the control of dynamical systems in engineered processes and machines. The objective is to develop a model or algorithm governing the application of system inputs to drive the system to a desired state, while minimizing any delay, overshoot, or steady-state error and ensuring a level of control stability; often with the aim to achieve a degree of optimality.

If you are moving your robot, control theory is something to take into consideration. This can be applied anywhere where you have control over a system, and a way to measure it's position. This section covers multiple controllers that can be used to move a system in just the right way, from primitive bang bang controllers, to PID, TBH, and FeedForward controllers.

Position Tracking

You cannot apply control theory if you don't have reliable data on the location of your robot. There are numerous methods to tracking your robot, from 1 dimensional distance, to full field position tracking with odometry.