Tag Archives: lfr

Line Following Robot using AVR ATmega8

One of the most basic autonomous robot you can build is a line following robot(LFR). This type of robot is run over a white surface which has an arbitrary path drawn over it by using back paint. The task of the robot is to run exactly along this painted path. You may note that the surface may also be black(or any other dark colour), in that case the path is a light colour like white. Please watch the following video for a LFR in action. Designing an LFR At minimum our LFR design require the following components. A sensor to detect the line on the surface.(It can be a simple IR Reflectance Sensor or an high end camera!). We will use a simple IR based sensor, it is cheap and easy to build and use. This article describe how to make a line sensor array. A microprocessor to run the code that takes inputs from the sensor and control the motion of robot. We will use a cheap single chip computer called an microcontroller (MCU). A popular family of microcontroller is AVR series from Atmel. A member of the popular family is ATmega8. ATmega8 is chosen because it has just the required amount of resources and is very low cost. The MCU cannot drive the motors (used to actually make […]

Making a Line Sensor using IR Receiver

A line follower robot, or a LFR in short, is a simple autonomous robot that optically tracks a line made on the surface of the floor. That means you have an arbitrary line drawn on the floor and the robot tracks it by moving right along it! The line is sensed using a piece of hardware called a line sensor. A line sensor can be easily made using a low cost IR Rx/Tx pair. The IR Rx emmits IR radiation and the Rx helps in receiving the waves. See the figure below for working of line sensor. Working of Line Sensor Schematic for Line Sensor. Line Sensor Schematic   Actual IR Rx Tx Pair. Line Sensor Array. Actually a group of such sensor units as described above is required to make a line follower robot. We generally use 3 or 5 such sensor unit to make a line sensor array. The complete steps are described below. You need small piece of veroboard (general purpose PCB). Actual IR Rx Tx Pair. We will fit the sensor at the castor mount of the metal chassis. So we carefully mark the location we need drilling. Mark drilling location.   Mark the drilling location. You can make the hole easily by using a pair of scissor. Just press and rotate. Make hole using scissor. […]