Understanding common sensor characteristics

The task of a sensor is to turn a feature of the physical world that our robot cares about, for example, the ambient temperature, into an electrical signal that the Arduino can read via any of the interfaces that we will discuss later in this chapter. To select a suitable sensor, we need to be sure that it can at least theoretically meet the requirements of our application. There are many characteristics for any given sensor, but in practice, it can be hard to know at the start of a DIY robotics project what exact requirements really matter. It can sometimes be difficult to find the exact technical details of a sensor. That being said, the two characteristics that you should always consider when selecting a sensor for your robots are the sensor’s measurement range and resolution.

The measurement range tells us what the minimum and maximum values of the physical quantity that our sensor measures are. A distance sensor, for example...