Line follower - next generation

Abstract

A big hall with lots of workstations, a lot of people working and depending on each other's work. A lot of things, that just can't be delivered as e-mail attachments. The workers have to leave their workstations just to walk back and forth delivering and fetching things like hardware, hand written documents, doughnuts...

This project is about a cheap system, where a line following robot works as a gofer. Instead of expensive air pressure shuttles travelling along air tubes following a pre-designed route, the robot follows lines on the floor, lines made by duct tape. Additional qr coded tags mark crossings to assure correct navigation.

Ordering the robot and sending it to a destination node happens online on a web page. Logics will find the shortest path in the mesh. Changes in the mesh will be easy. Just add some lines and qr tags to the floor. And add the lines and tags to the logics.

Things needed

• A robot car chassis suitable for carrying the needed things

• A microcontroller with a wifi module or integrated wifi

• A rechargeable power source for the car and the microcontroller

• The usual sensors needed for line following

• Sensor for reading QR codes

• A PHP enabeled web site, which holds the logic for ordering and sending the robot, maintaining the mesh structure, uploading edited mesh structures to the robot car

Robot car logics

The robot car takes commands from the web page:

• Drive to given address. The logics on the car finds the shortest path to the given address. It keeps info on which line in the mesh it is and what direction it has, thus knowing what the next QR coded node will be (either a crossing or a destination address). After each scanned QR code it redefines its route just to be sure it's on track, until the destination is reached.

• When address is reached, wait at least for a given time, before accepting new orders, or accept a break command, which abrupts immediately the waiting. A deliver command means that the car is carrying something. An order command means the car should be empty before it comes. That means that there can be several order commands waiting, but a deliver command must be performed first.

• If the car can carry several packages, more logics need to be added, where the car makes decisions about in what order things are to be fetched and delivered. A 2D version of elevator logics.