Line Follower Robot

Robot is used for doing task given. Robot doesn’t have emotion, sense, pain and so on. In the world today mostly work is being taken over by robot. Not 100%. We can see robot is used for  industry field where robot is assemble part of the car, in oil and gas field robot is drill the ground to find an oil, and also for entertainment where now is very popular among Japanese people.

Here i will show my first line follower robot using PIC18F4550. This robot will follow command where it will move on the track according to the programming we have written. Using sensor as input and motor as output to PIC, the robot will follow the line. Here it will detect white surface to give a respond to PIC.
 
This line follower robot is very popular among university and polytechnic student. This is because the capability of PIC to write and read again and again to do different task. PIC microcontroller is using EEPROM memory technology. It can be erase and write again and again, but before write anything it must be erase first using electrical voltage generated externally or internally in EEPROM.
Some of the famous EEPROM manufacturers are ATMEL, Microchip Technology, Infineon, ON Semiconductor and many more. This project we are using Microchip Technology manufacturers.

 In PIC microcontroller also has ADC (analog to digital converter) this term is familiar among electronic student. This ADC will convert analog input to digital output. We must declare it first in programming or algorithm to make sure that PIC operate like we want. All this specification we can find it in data sheet.

PIC18F4550 also can communicate using USB 2.0. This is advantages to PIC18Fxxx than PIC16Fxxx family where its only can support serial communication (RS232). With these advantages we can build USB bootloader for this PIC.


For build a Line Follower Robot, we must consider this all circuit :

• USB bootloader circuit
• Sensor circuit
• Motor driver circuit

We just need 3 circuit, but the connection is complicated at all for the beginner.

USB bootloader circuit :

Sensor circuit :

We using LM324 comparator. This will allow analog to digital converter.

Motor driver circuit :

We using H-Bridge L293D for motor driver. Here we gonna use DC motor.
Here some table for reference :

All design circuit is depend on user. If user want to use 4 sensor so it will have 4 sensor circuit.

USB bootloader.hex for PIC18F4550
PIC18F4550 data sheet

The main important thing that you should know is :

1. USB Bootloader circuit
2. Sensor circuit & type of sensor (e.g IR sensor)
3. Motor driver circuit & type of motor (e.g motor driver)
4. C Programming

Step Guided

1. Build a USB bootloader, sensor, and motor driver circuit
2. Burn USB bootloader.hex into PIC using programmer (e.g PICkit 2,BZchip)
3. Test USB bootloader by connect it to the laptop or computer
4. Construct which PORT you want to connect to input for sensor and output for motor. (here I'm using PORT B as input sensor and PORT D as output motor)
5. Make sure polarity for sensor and motor driver is correct.
6. Write programming in MPLAB using C18 compiler
7. Burn into PIC using USB bootloader
8. Test robot and diagnose problem
9. Finish

This step guided will show process from the beginning until the end. You can use mine programming for Line Follower Robot by download link below for reference :

line follower robot.c

Below some picture about my robot :

Contact me if you got any problem.