Hi,

I am planning to build a robot platform that my trash container will sit on. At the appointed time and day, the "trash robot" will leave the garage, travel down the driveway, and stop at the end to wait for the garbage truck. Then, at the end of the day, the robot will reverse its path and come back up the driveway. My plan to guide the robot from point A to B is to bury a wire under the concrete in the path the robot should take. The wire would be RF energized to emit a signal that a receiver on the bottom of the robot would pick up, and thus follow the path. I figure it would work much like a dog "invisible fence" dog collar/transmitter setup if you have ever used one of those for your dog (dog gets too close to the buried wire, and the collar beeps/shocks the dog).

For now, as we are about to pour the concrete for the driveway, I need the technical plan to lay down the wire, and know how to connect it at each end of the path. In other words, will the wire act as an antenna that is just laid down the path to the end of the driveway with no loop back to the beginning, or should the wire be connected to ground at the end, or should it be looped back to the beginning to form a complete electrical path?

I would appreciate anyone's guidance on this. I wouldn't doubt a kit is available somewhere that handles a guidance function like this for this or other applications.

Thanks,

John

John
Your idea should work for a couple of weeks only. The reason why is that when you garbage can is sat back down they usuall just drop it with no regard to what it might contain. It is a good idea though and shows that you are thinking.
Good luck with your project.
Bill

Bill,

Thanks for the advice. I was planning to build a rolling platform for the can to sit on with a (probably rubber) cushion that would contain all of the robotics to avoid the problem you mention so that when they sat the can back down (they do this pretty accurately I noticed with the automated trucks), the stuff wouldn't be damaged.

So, back to the problem I'm trying to solve for now. Any thoughts of how to configure the wire for the RF transmitter?

Thanks,

John

(I know this post is probably wayyyy to late for your needs...)

useing a wire as an attena seems a bit overly complex imo, i would just place a steel barin the concrete and use magnetic sensors (metal detector) to follow it...

but if you are determined to go the RF way, no real configuration is needed for the "atenna" just have a steady flow going thrue the wire, perhaps a AC flow might be easyer, and tune the reciever to pick up on it, and since the radiofrequency only has 2 travel a short distance it wont need much power, but that bieng said, you probably would be better off placing the wire as a coil rather then just flat. (but make shure the current is low so you don't end up melting the wires)