WOMP THE LINE FOLLOWING ROBOT
OVERVIEW
As a final project for our Advanced Mechatronics course in the MSR program, we were required to build a line following robot that would participate in a "race" with other robots developed by our peers during the final exam time for the course. We were given complete access to the machine shop and mechatronics lab, as well as a cheap and readily available Android phone device.
For full details on the CAD, PCB schematic, Android code, and microcontroller code, please follow this link to my Advanced Mechatronics Github page and pay particular attention to HW4, HW16, and the Tech Cup.
ANDROID PROGRAMMING
The line that the robot needed to follow was black whereas the background of the racecourse was white. With this in mind, I wrote an Android app that used the Android phone's camera in conjunction with OpenCV to find the center point of the line. Then, the Android phone sent this data to the PIC microcontroller by a direct connection via a micro USB cable.
MICROCONTROLLER PROGRAMMING
For this project, I used a PIC32 microcontroller and made the schematic for the PCB using EAGLE. A key component of the PCB was the usage of two LM358 motor drivers in order to control the wheels. The wheels were moved incrementally left or right depending on the directional information received by the Android phone.