Exploring thyself...: FRONTIER

27.Apr.2013:
I had given a Seminar on "Mobile Robotics" with my personal experience in robocar design. Seeing the response, I chose to share it online and published "Robocar's C++ code". I am very happy to share that 32.9K reads, 75 embed views and 3889 downloads as on 27th Apr 2013. The PPT deals with basic electronics and stepper motor basics to startup with mobile robots. The use of parallel port programming for the interfacing approach is quite easier and demonstrated here.

The Success story:

In today’s design flow, hardware and system design methods are stretched to solve increasingly larger problems in order to overcome increased complexity. Due to the precise motion and easy control, Stepper Motor is being widely used by amateurs in robotics. Our study provided necessary details on how to interface stepper motor and its combinations first through Standard Parallel Port (SPP) of computer and then through microcontroller. The design process is more an iterative process, involving experience, calculation and experimentation. We have done quite a work in order to foster creativity and cut down on time spent re-researching methods of using stepper motors, mathematical relations has been derived for converting turns or positioning into discrete steps as required by Stepper Motor and thus the software equips the motor with AI.

In this design project, we accomplished our goals of implementing unique software strategieswith low cost robot platform whose movement is controlled by self developed modular C++ programme through Parallel Port to control stepper motors that drive the ROBOCAR. We illustrated our methodology that won us Best Robo Design at the Vitrubio, the Robotics contest held during Technozion’06 , the technical fest @ NIT Warangal. Later, we made further improvements and added more feature and happened to present a paper at Engineer'06, the technical fest @ NIT Surathkal, where too we won in the paper presentation.

We proposed methods to specify and refine designs from a purely software description at a functional level to a level where the hardware components are encapsulated as objects and their interfaces clearly defined. Using simple mathematical relations, we proposed a methodology after quite a few practical and theoretical experiments for the different problems faced such accurate forward and backward movements, precise angle turns, etc. We started with a simple handshaking interface and refined it to more complex functionality which will make it function like an Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) machine.

TZ'06-07 Parallel port controlled Robocar

4th Apr, 2006: Paper ppt at Engineer'06 @ NIT Surathkal

With further improvements to our robocar, myself and Yudhisther happened to present paper titled "Robot Design using Stepper Motor interfaced by PC" at Blueprint, IEEE National paper cum project presentation during ENGINEER’06 of National Institute of Technology Surathkal (1st-4th April, 2006). We received third place in the paper presentation.

We proposed methods to specify and refine designs from a purely software description at a functional level to a level where the hardware components are encapsulated as objects and their interfaces clearly defined. Using simple mathematical relations, we proposed a methodology after quite a few practical and theoretical experiments for the different problems faced such accurate forward and backward movements, precise angle turns, etc. We started with a simple handshaking interface and refined it to more complex functionality which will make it function like an Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) machine.

I am thankful Mr. P. Murlidhar, faculty, NIT Warangal; Mr. Apoorv Goyal; Mr. Supreeth Murthy; Mr. Yudhisther Pandey; and Mr. Vrishank Raghav for their help into all this.

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Thu, Mar 15, 2007: Roborace @ TZ'07

Alongside are the few of the snaps for my robo during roborace and line-follower robotics competition during the technical fest Technozion'07 at our college.

This was remote controlled roboracing competition where two robos will compete at the same time in the two arena's sideby. The robo is required to drag the ball avoiding it to fall into the pits, as well there are obstacles here and there in the way. I used stepper motor controlled by C++ program interfaced through parallel port to computer. The remote control command was sent to the program which generated required pulses to control the robo.