It is more to be an excperience than to be a project.

Frodo FYR is supposed to be an automatic robot that gets the map of a 90-degree-angle room.

We did not complete it, we just build the mechanical part and put the approperiate algorithms.

Idea and Team
Idea

The basic idea was Yahya's.

He was searching for a group to build a robot with him to register for the college's competition for brilliant ideas.
Team

The rest of the team joined him and we worked at Summer.

None was convinced with what we wanted to do, most doctors, TAs and even our colleges never believed we can do any thing that days.

Although we did not complete all what we wanted to do, we learnt a lot and our work that summer motivated and encouraged other students to join the group the following summer and work in Robotics (Boe Bot Project).
Scenario to illustrate
The targeted scenario was:

1) Put Frodo FYR in any corner of the room.

2) Open Frodo FYR by switching the ON button on, it should start to move beside the wall until it reaches the corner that it started moving from. It will stop automatically.

By then, Frodo should have the data that can be used to draw the map of the room when they are transfered to a PC.

Connecting the Robot to the computer was not implemented at all.
The implemented

The robot now walks beside the wall.

When it faces a corner it turns left.

When it faces a space it turns right.

The following figures illustrates the implemented scenario.
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Mechanical Parts
Construction

1) We bought two kids toys, each cost 9 pounds.

2) We used their two motors, gear boxes and connected them with a plastic part, as shown in the figures.

3) Another plastic part was put above the first with a Nivea in-between. It was put to install the Sensors.
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Algorithms and Assumptions
Sensors and movement direction

If you want your robot to get the map, then you need to think of how it will lead its own way.

If we thought of the robot as a square object, you will need sensors to be only in two sides.

Whatever route the robot will take beside the wall, it will only touch the wall by two sides.

This assumes that you will choose whether the robot will go clockwise or anti-clockwise.
Stopping criteria

The robot knows that it reached the corner to start from by keeping the difference between Xs and Ys within a range.
Calculating Distance

You can calculate distance by calculating the time while you know the average speed. This is not practical at all, because speed cannot be constant due to fraction and battery power.

We found another solution which requires a photo cell that is connected to the wheel.

We found that this idea is applied in the Boe Bot after that.
Circuit and Controller
Sensors

We added 3 sensors. Two on its left, and one at the front.
H-bridge

It is used to control the motors' directions.
PIC 16F84

The PIC was used to control the circuit. We wrote the code using MikroC using C language.

It worked well in the simulation, but we faced problems in installing the code into the PIC
Final Temporal Circuit

When the PIC did not work we constructed a simple Combinational Circuit to control the robot movements.
The Name

Frodo is the famous character at "Lord of the Rings" series.

His journey in the trilogy was very hard and challenging but he succeeded to reach as we hoped.
Going to Dr Salah Seleim
First deal with Dr Salah

After we reached this, we went to Dr Salah to consult him.

Imagine dealing with Dr Salah when you are still at the first year. They were not good days at all, but we learnt a lot.

He gave us the Boe Bot and we started another two excperiences dealing with Boe Bot and dealing with Dr Salah :D.
What Computer Engineers should do.

We then discovered that we wasted portion of our time in jobs that are not ours.

Building the mechanical parts is not our job.

Computer Engineers should be concerned with controlling and programming these parts and believe us, this is not easy at all because hardware does not understand any thing.

I remember that Dr said that they used 12 computer to control the Apollo kit.
Future Work

1) Implementing the connection between the computer and the PIC to get the data.

2) Implement a program to draw the map using the data transfered to the computer.

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