Warehouse robot

• C
• C++
• LaTeX
• Python
•  
• 2014

As my bachelor thesis project I and my group programmed and fitted a simple one armed robot with sensors. The goal was to program a robot that could follow a course and move objects between locations. The course was represented by black tape on the floor, and the stops where identified using RFID cards. We had one semester to plan and develop the robot.

The course looked something like this:

We fitted the robot with a color sensor array to track the tape line. The location of the objects at the stops were identified using a servo with a distance sensor mounted on it. Everything was controlled by four micro-controllers communicating over an I²C-bus. Each controller had its own purpose:

• Read and provide sensor data to the rest of the processors
• Control LCD send sensor data and receive commands over Bluetooth. This was connected with a GUI written in C++ and Qt.
• Control the robot arm servos
• Goal tracking and steering

At the end of the semester the robot competed against two other robots of the same kind, made by other groups. Our robot was the only one that could complete the course autonomously, as the other groups had to manually control the robot arm at the stops. Sadly the RFID detection was unstable which meant the robot would sometimes miss stops which meant it had to circle the course multiple times. However, it managed to complete the course with 8 stops completely autonomously in the end.