Engineering Projects/Robot car/Howard Community College/Fall2012/p3-503 TZN

Problem Statement
Get a robot car to run independently of human input. Get a robot car to follow a designated course and to avoid obstacles independently.

Team Members
Naik Taylor Zeher Shin

Summary
The project is to build a robot car that is able to drive itself after given a course. The car will be able to avoid obstacles.

We got the QRE sensors to detect a black line successfully and developed code to sample the sensors and talk to the motors.

We placed a sonar sensor on top of a servo motor to scan for obstacles and wrote code for the motors and sensors to work together.

Here is a video of the Robot Car.

Poster
''Put a graphic in wikimedia, include the graphic here or link to it here. The graphic should be suitable for creating a traditional project poster.''

Story
11/7/12 we as a group assigned each member of the team to concentrate on specific tasks.

1. Variable Steering - All

2. Variable Speed - Shin

3. Collision Detection - Zeher

4. Course Detection - Dhir Naik

5. Remote Control - Taylor

11/15/12

We became familiar with the Arduino chips and software. We are looking at the schismatics of the IRM-105S sensors and the QRE sensors. We have also tested sensors in Arduino to get output values to get ready for programming.

11/22/12

We got the the 2 motors to work in Arduino. We programed specific turns and moving forward and in reverse. The motors would not work at full power when both of them are on so we charged the battery and both motors are working fine. We used sample code from Moto Sheild to run the motors. We also found a remote control for the car to get running and starting designing IR sensors for the car.

11/29/12

We continued working with the QRE sensors for course detection and were able to get good output values from a black line with white on either side. We combined the arduino code used to control the wheel motors with code for the IR sensors here. This code is for three IR sensors as input variables and the four wheel motors as output variables. The structure of this code can be used for obstacle avoidance or course detection, as it samples 3 IR sensors for their inputs and outputs to the motors. We also staring using a smaller remote car to work with remote steering.

12/6/12

We tested the QRE sensors for course detection on the robot car and they are working but the code needs some work for the car to follow the line smoothly. We could not get the IRM-105S IR sensors to detect IR light bouncing off objects so we decided to use an ultrasonic sensor instead. We placed the ultrasonic sensor on top of a standard servo motor so it can scan for obstacles and choose the best path the go after detecting an obstacle. We used sample code from Moto Sheild to control the motors, and sample code from Arduino Playground for the Sonar Sensor and the Servo Motor. Here is a video of the Robot Car.

Decision List
List all formal decisions made with links to their documentation such as a decision tree or decision matrix.

Material List
-car

-3 QRE1113 sensors

-bread board

-arduino with moto sheild

-sonar sensor

- servo motor

Software List
1. Arduino Software

2. Line Follower

3. Line Detector

4. sample code from Moto Sheild

6. sample code from Arduino Playground for the Sonar Sensor and the Servo Motor.

Time
32 hours

Tutorials
Here is your starting point on everything arduino. Tutorial series for beginners.

Next Steps
The next steps will be:

-integrate all the components together

- add an IR sensor for backing up

-simplify the code so it would be easier for others