PROJECT REPORT OF ROBOCON 2010 ROBO-PHARAOHS BUILD PYRAMIDS

Under the guidance of Dr. P.M.Pathak Assistant Professor Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee

Acknowledgement
It was a great show put up by IIT Roorkee team at Robocon - 2010.This was made feasible by tremendous hard work put in by the students, and able guidance from Dr. P. M. Pathak. A special mention of thanks to our honourable director Dr. S.C. Saxena who helped us to initiate this project. Team Robocon is thankful to Ex-Dean of Sponsored Research and Industrial Consultancy (SRIC), Dr. S. Ray , Dean SRIC Dr. J. D. Sharma and Associate Dean SRIC Dr. B. K. Mishra for supporting the team in every possible way. We are thankful to Dr. P. Kumar, Head of the Department, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering for his cooperation and motivation provided to the team during the project. We are also thankful to Dr. P. K. Jain, Chief Advisor of Hobbies Club for allowing us to work from Model and Robotics section. We are highly grateful to our Robocon Team Advisor Dr. P.M. Pathak. His insight and vision in the field of Robotics helped out our team to put a good effort despite being a rookie. He was always with the team during the course of 8 months for preparation of Robocon constantly helping our team to come up with best design. We hope to attain newer heights with the cooperation and motivation from all of you at Robocon 2010. Team Robocon10

IIT ROORKEE STUDENT TEAM FOR ROBOCON10 Sr. Name Branch Year
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. RAJVEER SINGH MARUT SHUKLA SHIVAM SAXENA DINESH VOHRA BHUVAN NEEMA LOKESH SARDANA NARENDRA VERMA NAVDEEP AGRAWAL RAHUL KUMAR SHUBHAM KHADRIA TARUN MAANDI AVINASH CHOPRA PULKIT GUPTA AAYUSH RAI NISCHEY GROVER AYUSH RASTOGI SUKHVIR SINGH KSHITIZ TRIPATHI SUMIT GARG RAJAT GARG APOORVE DAVE SHIV SAI PRASAD AYUSH AWADHIYA PRINCE JAIN HIMANSHU SETIA

P&I Mechanical P&I P&I Mechanical P&I Mechanical P&I Mechanical Mechanical Mechanical Mechanical E&C E&C E&C E&C E&C E&C E&C E&C E&C E&C Mechanical EE E&C

III III III III II II II II II II II II III III III III III III III III III III II II II

ROBOCON
ROBOCON is an Asia-Oceania Robotics Competition organized by Asia Broadcasting Union annually with a sole objective of encouraging and promoting robotics amongst the students at the college level. This grand event since 2005 has witnessed participation from almost every country across Asia, and India stands no exception. Sponsored and promoted by National Broadcaster Doordarshan (DD National), the best colleges and university throughout India, face off in national qualifiers so as to represent the country in the International finals held in the host country.

ROBOCON Team - IIT Roorkee

Our IIT Roorkee Team has been actively participating in this competition since last two years. We aim at designing the autonomous and manual robots as per the problem statement as put forward by the host country. This contest is aimed at showing off our technical skills through self-invented robots. This Robocon team is made with the combined efforts of students who are very much talented in Mechanical as well as Electronics. This contest gives a chance to these students to enhance their practical knowledge by participating in this competition and apply in practical, all those theories which they have learned through books.

Contents
Introduction to Theme ROBOCON10 Problem Outline Our Approach i) Mechanical Driving mechanism Lifting mechanism Pushing Mechanism Golden Block Holder ii) Electronics Controller Board Line Sensor H-Bridge Motor Driver Encoders Battery Bots Khufu ROBOT Khafraa ROBOT Mankaura ROBOT

Innovative Features PS3 Game pad Accelerometer Path Finder using Encoders Budget

Introduction to Theme
The Pyramids of Giza and other monuments on the Giza Plateau are among the greatest world treasures. In fact, the Pyramids are the icons of world heritage in general and are widely pictured as such. It includes the three Pyramids of Khufu, Khafraa and Mankaura private tombs and the Sphinx. Robo-Pharaohs Build Pyramids is the main theme of this contest. The idea is based on a virtual time machine that takes ancient Egyptian Great-Pyramids builders inside classrooms of technical schools. The new target is to build parts of the three Pyramids in sequence. Competing team members should be accurate, fast and cooperative. They should adhere to the main requirement of not using binding material between blocks. The winner team is the "Robo-Pharaoh" which succeeds to finish building assigned parts of the three Pyramids first. During three minutes, red and blue teams compete in order to mimic one of the surviving Seven World Wonders.

Khufu

Khafraa

MANKAURA

Pyramid and block specification Block specification

Problem outline
The whole problem can be summarized as follow-: 1. Total problem was divided into 3 phase and was to be completed in 3minutes. 2. First phase for Khufu pyramid in 90 sec, second for Khafraa pyramid in 60 sec and third for Mankaura pyramid in 30 sec. 3. One manual robot for Khufu, one or two autonomous robots for Khafraa and one autonomous robot for Mankaura pyramid was to be built. 4. Robots were to be built within the dimension limit of 1X 1 X 1.5m3 (l X b X h) with total weight of 50kg. 5. Task was to complete the semi-built pyramids by placing blocks layer by layer in the given time frame. 6. Points were allotted for each block placed perfectly within the tolerance limit. 7. Team which complete the pyramids was declared ROBO PHAROH.

Our Approach
First the theme was studied and required functions were enlisted. We planned to build three robots. For satisfying these functional requirements, mechanisms were developed and stimulated on different CAD software like SOLIDWORKS2009, ANSYS etc. The required circuitry was developed in ORCAD. After successful testing, individual components were fabricated.

Mechanical
1. Driving mechanism The machines were driven by two rear wheels and use differential drive mechanism for turning purpose. The rear wheels always rotate at same speed at PWM supplied by the microcontroller. All wheels are powered by geared brushless DC Motors (24V, 300rpm). The rear wheel motors gets signals from microcontroller based on feedback from line sensor. The differential drive keeps turning the machine till it is aligned with the white line. The speed of the machine can be changed by increasing or decreasing the percentage PWM given to the motors of rear wheels.

2.

Lifting mechanism :-The lifting mechanism consisted of two telescopic channels standing parallel to each other. A telescopic channel consists of two parts namely slider and base channel. The slider can freely slide on base channel with the help of rollers. The base channels were mounted on the base of the machine and were held upright. Sliders of both channels were connected at the top and bottom to keep them parallel and holder was mounted over them. There is a polymer thread tied at one end to the robot at the bottom of the sliders and other end tied to a winding pulley at the base of the machine and in between passing over a pulley mounted at the top of the base channels. The winding pulley is actuated by a dc motor. In this mechanism, winding or unwinding of the thread will correspondingly lift or lower the slider on which holder is mounted. Thus holder can be raised or lowered with a single motor. The length of the base channels used in this machine is 60cms. This mechanism is able to raise holder by 70cms. The position and change in the height of the holder is sensed with the help of a linear encoder. 3.Pushing mechanism To remove the blocks from the holder, pushers were made. These pushers were made by wooden structure fixed in a aluminium plate which can move in the slit by thread passing over the pulley and connected to the motor. On starting the motor the wooden structure move and push out the block from the pipes on the semi build pyramid structure.

4.

Golden block holder

To hold pipe, having cross-section of 58mm, a holder is there. The holder is designed such that the pipe held with it can have just 90 degrees of motion and get locked there i.e. it can rotate about horizontal axis of holder. The holder is made up of thick pieces of aluminium channels and the horizontal rotational axis is enabled using ball bearing. The bearing lies in between slider mount and grip of holder. The holder is mounted at the bottom of the lifting mechanism by bolting it to casted sliders mount.

Electronics
1) Controller board The Arduino duemilanoves ATmega328 is a lowpower CMOS 8-bit microcontroller based on the AVR enhanced RISC architecture. By executing powerful instructions in a single clock cycle, the ATmega328 achieves throughputs approaching 1 MIPS per MHz allowing the designer of the system to optimize power consumption versus processing speed.

2) Line sensor Line sensors are used for sensing white line on dark surface or black line on light surface. This line sensor board has seven line sensors connected together. These sensors working together

can follow any curved or zigzag path. The multiple sensors can even detect nodes and move on the maze of white or black lines. Line sensor consists of high intensity red LED for illumination and directional photo transistor for line sensing. Phototransistor consists of a photo transistor and convex lens. Because of the precise alignment between lens and photo transistor it has a very narrow viewing angle of 5 degrees. This makes the line sensor highly immune to ambient light. This sensor gives 0.18 volts on bright surface and gives 2.2V or more on the dark surface. Its output is analog in nature. Because of analog output one can write complex algorithm to follow white line using microcontroller.

3) H- bridge Motor driver An H-bridge is an electronic circuit which enables a voltage to be applied across a load in either direction. These circuits are often used in robotics and other applications to allow DC motors to run forwards and backwards.

4) Encoder A rotary encoder, also called a shaft encoder, is an electromechanical device used to convert the angular position of a shaft or axle to an analog or digital code, making it an angle transducer. Also, by using a rotary encoder, no. of rotations completed by the motor can be obtained in real time using which we can determine the distance moved by the robot. We used E4P miniature encoder for this purpose. The E4P miniature encoder is designed to provide digital quadrature encoder feedback for high volume applications with limited space constraints. The E4P version utilizes an innovative push-on code wheel which accepts shaft diameters of 1.5mm to .250".The encoder cover is easily snapped onto the base and is embossed with the connector pin-out. The E4P series encoder can be connected by using a (high retention 4conductor snap-in polarized 1.25mm pitch) connector. 5) Battery Lithium polymer batteries are used as the power source. Each battery supplies 6.14 V. they were used to reduce weight of the robot which was crossing the limit with the use of Lead Acid Batteries.

BOTS
KHUFU Robot
This was the semi autonomous robot consisting of picking, placing and lifting mechanism. It was capable of placing 3 blocks in the 1st layer, 3 blocks in the 2nd layer, one block in the 3rd layer and the top Golden block. For controlling the robot we used PS3 controller. The key features required in the semi autonomous carrier robot were: At the beginning of the game, in the start zone, the dimensions of the Automatic Robot including the preloaded blocks should not exceed 1,000 mm (long) x 1,000 mm (wide) x 1,500 mm (height). It should be able to place all the blocks in a layer accurately within accuracy of +/-25mm so as to proceed for next layer. It should get properly aligned with stock blocks for reloading.

Khafraa Robot
This was the semi autonomous robot consisting of picking, placing and lifting mechanism. It was capable of placing 3 blocks in the 1st layer, 3 blocks in the 2nd layer, one block in the 3rd layer and the top Golden block. There were two autonomous robots for the Khafraa pyramid. First automatic Robot has to the Khafraa pyramid lower layer and the third layer while the second autonomous robot was assigned the task of building the second layer and places the Golden top. It was controlled using microcontroller board Arduino Duemilanove based on Atmega 328. The robot sensed lines on the arena to track its position. Also, the robot utilized the line sensor module to follow the white line present on the arena. Encoders were also there to calculate the distance travelled by the robot. H-Bridges was used to drive the motors.

Mankaura Robot
Mankaura Pyramid:This Pyramid consists of: a base, one layer, and a top. It has two prefixed blocks in its middle layer. The key features required in the autonomous carrier robot were: At the beginning of the game, in the start zone, the dimensions of the Automatic Robot including the preloaded blocks should not exceed 1,000 mm (long) x 1,000 mm (wide) x 1,500 mm (height). It should be able to place the lower block accurately within accuracy of +/-25mm.

It should remain stable while holding golden block and should place it accurately over top pin of pyramid.

This robot was used to build the Mankaura pyramid. Arduino Duemilanoves Atmega328 was used to run this robot. Rotary encoders were fitted on the motor shaft to give feedback to the microcontroller regarding the position of the robot which helped in placing the first block of the pyramid. Then line sensors were used to detect the line and thus helped in picking and placing the golden block.

Innovative feature
PS3 game pad
We used a PS3 remote to operate our Manual Robot. The manual robot was actually the same robot which was used to build the khafraa pyramid by burning a different program in the microcontroller. This different program made Arduino to read values from the PS3 gamepad. The PS3 was connected to the microcontroller with the help of an Arduino USB module. The Arduino USB module makes Arduino Duemilanove capable of reading the Serial values sent via USB port from the PS3 remote. There is separate library to use this PS3 with the help of Arduino USB module. So, USB cable from the PS3 is connected to this USB module which in turn connected to Arduino in which respective instructions can be given as per input from the PS3. This data from the PS3 is then processed in microcontroller to control the speed of the robot using Pulse Width Modulation (PWM). Pulse-width modulation (PWM) of a signal or power source involves the modulation of its duty cycle, to control the amount of power sent to the load. H-Bridges were used to drive the motors.

Accelerometer
This innovation made us robot to move without pressing any key. Just by the motion of wrist containing accelerometer, we can control the direction as well as speed of our manual robot. The accelerometer is a device which senses the proper acceleration or acceleration experienced relative to freefall. So, as the person tilts the remote containing the accelerometer, there is output corresponding to that which is sensed by in the form of some analog voltage. This analog voltage also varies with the amount of tilt. So, it is clearly indicated that just by wrist motion, th speed and direction of robot can be controlled.

Path Finder using encoders

Automatically moving from one point to other has been a tough job for robots. Most famous or traditional option is line following. But, line following reduces the speed of robot to a great extent. So, what we did is, we used encoders. This encoders are mounted on a free wheel which are attached to the robot at the point where original wheel motion can be tracked. After doing this, we calculated the number of rotations of the encoders corresponding to the distance moved by the robot. As we are using differential drive, so we are also capable of detecting the exact direction of motion. So, now we are independent of line and fast than ever.

Budget of Robocon-2010:

Aluminium Channels:Telescopic Sliders:Motors:- DC-52 (300 rpm) DC-52 (150 rpm) DC-42 (150 rpm) SE-Geared Motor:Custom made parts Castor Wheels:Encoders:Arduino duemilanoves ATmega328:Arduino duemilanoves USB Shield:Motor Drivers:Digital Sensors:Li-Po Batteries:Ps3 gamepad:Regesration Fee:Transfer, Loading and freight;Total

5000 1400 6*3600=21600 2*4200=8400 2*3200=6400 4*1400=5600 7000 1200 6*2200=13200 5*3200=16000 2*3500=7000 14*2600=26400 5*1800=9000 5*4600=23000 1500 10000 20000 182,700