Hello All,
As part of my Senior Design project at my local University, I'm building a small BS2 controlled mobile robot with several capabilities in which it reacts to its environment. Aside from the usual light following and line following capabilities that it already has, I want to endow it with a candle extinguishing capability similiar to the robots used in the Trinity College contest.
I have been researching this and for the moment, I'm thinking of using a Hammatsu UVTron to detect the prescence of the flame and an Eltec Pyro sensor for directional information as the robot pivots and scans. It seems to be a workable solution but I'm very interested in hearing from others who have dabbled in this particular task and what your solutions were/are. I have not yet even considered how to navigate toward the flame, stop and then activate a fan or can of compressed air to extinguish it, although I'm hoping this can be done by coordinating the output of the Eltec alone with movement commands issued to the servo motors. Thanks much, I really appreciate it.
-Dave