Designing and Constructing an Automatic Robot Driver for Vacuum Cleaner

Well, the title here is about my thesis works last year in 2007.

I dedicated the thesis to my family and friends who are in my hometown, Manado for the never ending love and supports. No body of my friends actually has read this dedication. That’s why, Using this blog, I want to share my knowledge about this thesis works, especially to my ex school, either SMU Kr Tomohon or Binsus Tomohon. 

First and foremost, I would like to give thanks and praise to the Almighty God for His graceand blessings throughout the entire project. Without Him, this was nothing.Furthermore to the Swiss Embassy that has provided me a 4-year scholarship to study in the SG University. Many thanks go out to them, the Swiss Embassy and the SGU. 

Langsung saja yaahh!, Designing and Constructing an Automatic Robot Driver for Vacuum Cleaner adalah bagaimana mendesain sebuah alat yang bisa mengangkut vacuum cleaner di atasnya tanpa perlu control dari manusia. Alat inilah yang saya sebut dengan robot driver. Jadi ketika mobile robotnya diletakkan di dalam ruangan, maka robot inilah yang akan bekerja sendiri mengitari seluruh lantai.- di project ini, robot tidak mendeteksi kotor atau debu, tapi masih dalam hal bagaimana caranya si robot tahu kalau seluruh bagian di ruangan telah tercover oleh handheld vacuum cleaner yang dimuat di atasnya. 

Block diagram

 Mechanical Design

Electrical Design  

Switch Button. The switch button works as the switching connector between the power supply and the electrical circuit. It is used to turn on and off the mobile robot. 

Photodiode Photodiode dipakai sebagai sensor jarak yang diletakkan di setiap sisi robot. Photodiode akan berpasangan dengan photo receiver sebagai penerima pantulan dari transmitter yakni photodiode. When detecting the wall, the photodiode receives light. It will be idle when there is no light reflected from the wall. It has the same work with the rear sensor. In other hand, the photodiode in the stairs detector will have different way of work, opposite with the first one of the wall sensor and rear sensor. When there is a stair or ledge, the photodiode will not detecting reflected light. The output of the comparator then will send signal to the microcontroller that stair has been detected.

Limit SwitchThe limit switches are four being installed on this robot driver. However, the output of these limit switches would only be connected just in a pin of the microcontroller. The signal would be detected as the collision of the bumpers that was placed to span the front of the robot driver.

Comparator

Comparator is a device that compares two voltages or currents as inputs and switches its output to indicate which is larger. Comparator digunakan bersama-sama dengan semua sensor yakni Photodiode.

DC Motors

Tahu toh motor yang di pake di tape. Nahh, itu merupakan jenis DC motor. Yang menggunakan batere sebagai sumbernya. DC motors applied in this thesis project are twin DC motors that each of them had the same characteristics. These motors actuated the wheels to mobilize the robot driver and were capable changing the direction of the robot driver. These motors are embedded with the reduction gear that minimize the motor rotation velocity and produce high torque.

DC Motor Driver

DC motor driver applied here is the L298 IC from ST Microelectronics®.

Battery Power supply required for this system was the voltage source which could provide two variety of voltage 12VDC and 5VDC. The 12VDC was used to supply gear head DC motor and the 5VDC was used to supply the logic circuit.

Microcontroller ATmega8 microcontroller is the main processor in the robot driver. It was programmed to receive the inputs and control the outputs 

Software and ProgrammingYang deprogram di sini adalah microcontrollernnya. ATmega8 bisa deprogram dengan menggunakan BASCOM AVR. Saya memilih yang satu ini karena lebih simple dan gampang dipelajari. PonyProg merupakan program jenis lain lagi yang berfungsi untuk mendownload binary code dari BASCOM ke microcontrollernya. Karena Microcontroler hanya mengenal code binary saja.  

And the result,.. The more detail explanation would be at the next post,!! Any questions? contact or pm to me @ the forum – binsusrocks.co.nr. thx!