Advantages
- Very low power requirement, hence it is best suitable for machinery with limited battery capacity, like mobile robots, laptops, pads, phones, etc.
- Inexpensive -> Not a very important issue in designing a revolutionary system. The redundancy is the most important feature.
- Very secure. The data flow among the source and target is unidirectional, meaning the direction of the infrared beam ensures that there in no leaked or move to nearby devices as it’s transmitted.
Disadvantages
- Data transmission happens in eye sight. -> Meaning you can not have it in a big robot.
- Short range communication -> Actually this is an advantage in our case, which brings more security.
- Easily gets interrupted by obstacle -> Meaning you can not have it in a robot with several layers between micro-controllers. Almost any kind of obstacle interrupt the signal.
- Not a good choice under extreme weather conditions(sunlight, rain, pollution etc) -> This is the most negative point for this technology not be used in an offshore robot.
Depending on the area of application Infrared might be or might not be the right choice. E.g. the short range of availability would increase our security a lot, while exactly in Walloid project the harsh weather condition is very common in future platforms. Today, there are many technologies exists that are much better than IR like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi etc.
