Final report

Name: Michael Franck

Date: 04/13/2014

Course Title:   Applied Robotics

Number:   ETI 4880C

Schedule:  Kendall: W: 6:40PM-9:10 PM

Term:  2013-2 (Spring 2014)

Mapping Robot

The purpose

To build a mapping robot that goes through a maze and maps it out.

Function, Structure and design

The robot will move by a chassis with four wheels. The robot chassis will be powered by its on 7.4V LIPO battery. The robot movement will be controlled by the arduino. The arduino micro controller will power by an 11.1V LIPO battery. The arduino will tell the chassis where to move by the results from the ultra-sonic sensor. The robot uses three ultra sonic sensors. Two will be place on the right side of the chassis to detect if a wall on its right side and the other in the front to detect if a wall is in front of it.  The ultra-sonic sensor will keep the robot a certain distance from the walls. As the robot move, it will keep an equal distance from the side of the walls. When the robot detects a wall in front of it, it will make a left turn.  As it moves through the maze, it will record its movement. It will know that it is in or out of the maze once it detects a black line. Once it completes the maze, it will display a simple view of the routes in the maze on a LCD. From the display maze, the map can be shifted left, right, up, down, zoomed in or out from the push buttons on top of the robot. The 7^th key is a zoom multiplier button when pressed, brings up a menu where to zoom multiplier can be set. The zoom multiplier is used to speed the zooming in or out.

Components

Arduino Mega 2560 micro controller

Ultra sonic sensor   x3

Line following sensor

Robot chassis with motor and encoder

Motor controller with encoder

Jumper wires

·         Male to male

·         Male to female

1K Resistors x8

Potentiometer

Graphic LCD

LIPO batteries

·         2 cell 7.4V, 4A, 25C

·         3 cell 11.1V, 1.5A, 20C

Bump sensor x2

Bread board x2

Push button (SPST) x7

Single and double sided tape

Result

Final design (for now) :

 

 

              

   

The above picture is a sample map that the robot created.
This is a video of it in action

Conclusion

This was an amazing challenge. I didn't have any hardware problems throughout this whole project, which gave me time to focus on the software. The cost for all the parts that I used on the robot may estimate to be around $200. Due to the fact I haven’t been able to make a big enough maze to show the true capabilities of my robot, for now the picture above will have to do (didn't really put much thought into building a large more complex maze  until the last minute…).

Mapping Robot - update 7

Progress since last milestone
I just realized that I never added a bump sensor to my robot, so i just added one and it's working as attended.

Problems/Difficulty encountered
when i added the bump sensor, the resistor i was using was a 100 ohm, which didn't work to well because the resistance was to low and it was letting most of the power go through, so i added a 1000 ohm resistor and everything was good afterwards.

Proposed progress for the next milestone
Add a second bump sensor to the front so it can cover the other half and also improve the code.

Mapping Robot - update 6

Progress since last milestone
I add a three new push buttons to my robot. One of the push buttons is used to zoom out of the map and another to zoom in. For the last push button, i'm using it as a menu button. So far for the menu,  the only thing I have added so far was a zoom multiplier function to speed up the zooming in and out. For example, to zoom 5 time faster or zoom 20 time faster. The reason for the zoom multiplier is that depending how long i let the robot map, the map can size can get very large and zooming in or out by 1 time ( basically shifting everything by 1 pixel at a time) can take a while.
I added a third ultra sonic sensor to the right back of the robot as well, to help keep the robot perpendicular to a wall when moving.

Here's an updated picture of my robot

Problems/Difficulty encountered
I ended up not adding the Intel Galileo due to it only having two fast ports and the rest of the ports input/ output speed is too slow to usable for my robot.

Proposed progress for the next milestone
Hopefully add some new functions to my robot or improve on existing functions.