Steps towards navigation and mapping

Mapping your environment, remembering where you've been and what you've seen, is fundamental to how humans and many animals survive.  For robots, mapping capabilities  increase the range of tasks that can be accomplished and the level of autonomy.

To accomplish this on the Bebot platform, I added a compass module.  With an ultrasonic PING and PWM servo drive motors, the robot will be able to determine its heading, detect obstacles and measure how far it has traveled.  Ultimately this will lead to Bebot producing and using a map.  Producing a map while exploring an environment is known as SLAM.

This image shows how to wire the compass on the breadboard.  The compass module needs four connections (pin 10 - SDA, pin 11 - SCL, 5V and GND).  For easy identification, I used yellow wires for data, red for power and black for ground.