––Devlog 12––

Making Sentinel Safer

Today I focused on improving autonomous navigation and making the rover safer when something goes maybe might go wrong.

A lot of today’s work was about making sure Sentinel doesn’t just assume that every sensor reading is correct or that every direction is safe.

I added a minimum turning clearance to the rover’s settings.

Before this, Sentinel could scan both directions and simply choose whichever side had more space.

For example:

left: 8 cm
right: 12 cm
the right side has more space, but 12 cm still isn’t enough room to safely turn.

Now it checks whether a direction actually has enough clearance before choosing it.

If both directions are clear, it chooses the side with more room.

If only one direction is clear, it chooses that direction.

If neither direction is clear, it knows that it needs to try something else.
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