Small Unarmed Robot for Defense and Security:A
Cost-Effective Approach Using Arduino Uno
Aniruddha Prabhu B P
Assistant Professor,Computer science and Engineering
Siddaganga Institute of Technology
Tumkur,India
aniprabhubp@gmail.com
Abstract—This paper is about designing a robot which is
economical and can help military by transmitting video in closed
quarter combats. small unarmed ground vehicle (SUGV) is a
robot consisting of a toy car acting as a platform and arduino
uno controller,batteries,Bluetooth module and a smartphone are
mounted on it.The DC motors of the wheels are connected to the
arduino controller and via the Bluetooth HC-05 module the
commands from the accelerometer of the smartphone are sent to
the microcontroller depending on which the motion and direction
of the wheel can be controlled. The robot can move in
forward,reverse,left and right directions and this movement is
controlled by the droid to arduino app installed in the
smartphone.The smartphone mounted on the platform uses
skype video conferencing application to send the live video of its
surveillance to the skype application installed in the laptop using
internet.By using the video soldiers can take suitable action.Thus
SUGV helps in minimizing risk to a soldier’s life.
Keywords—Miniature Robot;SUGV(small unarmed ground
vehicle);EOTS(Electro Optical Tracking System)
I. INTRODUCTION
During the 26/11 attacks on Mumbai the terrorists
mainly attacked Taj hotel, Oberoi hotel and Nariman hotel, the
terrorists killed around 164 people out of which 28 people
were foreign citizens who came to India for business. One
terrorist was caught by the commandos and 9 were killed.
Many people who lost their life were very important persons
in business and entertainment world. 15 police officers and 2
national security guards were martyred during Mumbai
attacks.
Whenever there is a terrorist attacks on buildings
such as hotels, government buildings etc. the structures have
long entryways and plenty of rooms to chase down the
disguised terrorists transforms into a huge issue. If the
searching for terrorists is done by a commando then his cover
might be blown and he may go under the radar of the covered
terrorists, which transforms into a very serious danger for his
life. As soon as the soldier goes into the room or the spot
where the terrorists are hiding then they may begin shooting at
him when he approaches that spot. In these circumstances if a
Robot like Small Unarmed Ground Vehicle is deployed to
check the hall ways and rooms then there will be no danger for
the life of soldier. SUGV transmits the live video of its
Shivanag Hebbal
Assistant Professor,Computer science and Engineering
Avanthi Institute of Technology,
Hyderabad, India
hebbalshiva@gmail.com
surveillance to the connected laptop and according to the view
of video the commandos can get prepared for the courses of
action for attack. On the off chance that there are numerous
terrorists in a solitary room with no prisoner then the Robot
can be exploded and kill or harm the terrorists [1].
Electro-mechanical machine such as a robot can be
controlled by PC and programs. In manufacturing plants
several robots are used for production of goods all over the
world. SUGV (Small Unarmed Ground Vehicle) robot can be
controlled utilizing an application for android mobile and can
be used for several military operations as a part of various
situations. The buttons in the android app are used to
accelerate and reverse the robot. The motion and turning of the
robot is controlled by the accelerometer in the smartphone.To
connect arduino controller and the Smartphone, Bluetooth
HC-05 module is used. From the accelerometer of the
Smartphone the robots movement is controlled. Every
mechanical movement of robots is accomplished because of a
motor which converts electric energy into mechanical energy.
DC motor used in SUGV converts electrical energy gained
from batteries to mechanical energy used for movement of the
wheels. A case of electric motor applications incorporates DC
motors utilized as a part of automobiles, robot and substance
blenders.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
The android smartphone controlled Bluetooth robot
utilizing 8051 microcontroller shows how these days advanced
cellphones are turning out to be more capable with multi core
processors, bigger storage, rich entertainment experience and
more specialized communication strategies. Bluetooth is for
the most part utilized for data exchange between devices and
add new enhancements to advanced mobile phones. Bluetooth
technology has changed how individuals use various devices
to transfer data at home or office. Utilizing a Smartphone as
the brain of a robot is as of now a dynamic research field with
a few open doors and promising great outcomes [1].
Miniature robots a glimpse from today and
tomorrow, Shows how the modern gadgets and weapons are
used by armed forces for reducing the danger to their life and
to overcome their enemies. With the advancement of
sophisticated technology it generally depends on the cutting
edge weapons or systems being utilized. Low power wireless
technology for industrial application is a description on how x Motor Controller: Whenever there are independent motors
the WSN(Wireless Sensor Network) has reduced burden on for the wheel sets of a platform then motor controller can
people with the use of its network and communication be used to control all the motors at a time.
technology. Currently Wireless Local Area Networks
(WLANs) are widely used for close field communication even
though they have demerits such as complexity, large power
dissipation. Bluetooth is used now as it uses low power and
provides good data transfer speed at close range[2][3].
Remote OS of an unarmed military robot for indoor
environment have been created for observation of the
dangerous suspected areas. Autonomous unmanned military
robots have distance, camera sensors. Currently research on
completely autonomous robots are been conducted but the
completely autonomous or self-governing vehicle require
artificial intelligence and advance control frameworks keeping
in mind the goal is to adapt to different ecological
circumstances for example detection of obstacles and ideal
route discovering and so on. Electro Optical Tracking System
(EOTS) which has a projector and a camera is mounted on
unarmed military robots. The camera module has the
movement platform, 3 pivot stabilizer and graphic framework.
The camera module must capture stable pictures as these
images are needed for administrators to control the unmanned Fig. 1: BlockhDiagram of SUGV
vehicles so new image processing techniques are used
[4][5][6]. x Controlling the Motion of Robot: Robots motion is
controlled by nine cases each of which is executed one at
III. IMPLEMENTED ARCHITECTURE
a time and by following them robot can move in forward,
A robot is controlled by PC and programs that is a reverse, left and right directions.
type of electro mechanical machine. Many robots are utilized
for creating several products in various industries and can be
found in production lines all over the world. SUGV (Small
Unarmed Ground Vehicle) robot can be controlled utilizing an
application for android Smartphone and can be utilized for a
few military operations as a part of various situations. The
buttons in the android application are utilized to accelerate and
reverse the robot, the movement and turning of the robot is
controlled by the accelerometer in the smartphone.Bluetooth is
used to connect controller and smartphone. The app in the
smartphone is used to control the motion of the robot i.e.,
accelerometer of the smartphone readings are sent to the
controller (SUGV is as shown in Figure 1)
x Microcontroller: ATmega328 is the basis for Arduino uno
microcontroller. It has 6 analog inputs, a connector jack, a
USB connection, a power supply, an ICSP header, a reset
button, a 16 MHz oscillator and 14 advanced I/O pins. A
Fig.2: Motion of the robot along four directions
user can connect the controller to the PC using USB port
or when it used remotely a battery can be used to supply
power to the board. USB to serial converter is The above Figure 2 shows the motion of the robot in
ATmega8U2 it is used instead of FTDI USB to serial four directions i.e. forward, reverse, left and right.
driver.
x Bluetooth Module: A very simple straight forward remote A. Coding in Arduino IDE 1.6.8
connection is setup that is why HC05 Bluetooth module is
used. HC05 has Bluetooth V2.0+Enhanced Data Rate. Arduino IDEA1.6.8 is used to code the arduino
CSR Bluecore is used as a framework in HC05 module microcontroller. It is an Integrated Development Environment
along with Adaptive Frequency Hopping and CMOS. that provides all the tools and code compilation and code
burning strategy to successfully build a program
 some LEDs will be flashing on the Arduino board and then the
message ‘Done Uploading’ is displayed in the status bar.If the
code is successfully uploaded the onboard LED will be
blinking.

Fig. 3: Uploading the code

x After Arduino uno board is connected and the code is
compiled successfully upload option is selected
x After a second some LEDs will be flashing on the
Arduino board, and then the message ‘Done
Uploading’ is displayed in the status bar.
Fig. 4: Developed SUGV Robot
x If the code is successfully uploaded the onboard LED
will be blinking. The Figure 4 shows the developed SUGV robot.
Successfully installing Arduino 1.6.8 and Microcontroller, Motor controller and batteries are mounted
successfully uploading compiled code to Arduino board is as on the platform. The robots wheel motion is controlled by the
shown in Figure 3. Board is mounted to robot platform and Smartphone via the Bluetooth module. The robot weighs
connected via Bluetooth HC05 to the smartphone. The motors approximately 1000g and has a width of 18cms and height of
of the platform are connected to the arduino via motor 14cms and can be easily fitted into a bag and transported.
controller. The Figure 5 is a snapshot of the droid to arduino app
which controls the motion of the robot. Connect button is used
B. Smartphone (Android) to connect to the Bluetooth HC-05 module mounted on the
robot and thus through this the smartphone is connected to the
A smartphone is a cellular telephone with developed microcontroller. Accelerate button is used to move robot in the
mobile OS which includes several features of a PC operating forward direction and reverse button is used to move robot in
system. The smartphones have many features such as media the backward direction.
player, Internet and GPS and it acts like a personal digital
assistant. It has a user friendly UI with either a LCD, LED,
OLED, AMOLED or comparative screen can run third party
apps, music players and have cameras. Most cell phones
delivered from 2012 onwards likewise have fast broadband
and motion sensors.
Android is an Operating System (OS) for mobile
phones at present maintained by Google built on the Linux OS
and developed mostly for Smartphone with user friendly
interface for example, tablet and PDA.
Applications, Application framework and libraries
are above the Linux kernel. API and programs are coded in C
language. Applications run on application framework which is
supported by java libraries. Linux kernel does not include
androids source code bases.

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS Fig. 5: Droid to Arduino app which controls the motion of the
robot
Arduino uno board is connected and the code is
compiled successfully, upload option is selected after a second The snapshots show the robot in motion
 x Robot moving in forward direction (accelerate).
x Robot moving in backward direction (reverse).
x Robot taking a left turn.
x Robot taking a right turn.

The Figure 6 shows robot moving in forward

direction this can be done by long pressing the accelerate
button on the droid to arduino app. As soon as the button is
released robot becomes static.

Fig. 8: Robot taking a left turn

The Figure 9 shows robot taking the right turn. This

can be done just by tilting the smartphone right and the right
tilt signal is passed from the accelerometer of the smartphone
to the controller by the Bluetooth module.

Fig. 6: Robot moving in forward direction

The Figure 7 shows robot moving in backward

direction. This can be done by long pressing the reverse
button. And as soon as the reverse button is released the robot
becomes static.

Fig. 9: Robot taking a right turn

The following figures show the snapshot of the

surveillance video from the skype application installed in the
smartphone and its video from the skype application installed
in the laptop which can be viewed by a soldier.
In Figure 10,snapshot of the video from the skype
application installed in laptop is shown. Live surveillance
video from the Smartphone skype application is sent to
another skype application installed in the laptop. This snapshot
Fig. 7: Robot moving in the reverse direction
is taken during low light conditions.
The Figure 11 shows a snapshot of surveillance video
The Figure 8 shows robot taking the left turn. This
taken from skype application installed in the smartphone. This
can be done just by tilting the smartphone left and the left tilt
video is sent to the skype app installed in the laptop. Wherever
signal is passed from the accelerometer of the smartphone to
the robot goes its video is sent. This snapshot is taken during
the controller by the Bluetooth module.
low light conditions and shows long hallways with rooms.
 The video footage clearly shows whether there are
any members hiding in the room or not as this video is taken
in daylight. The surveillance video is of the office shown in
Figure 13. As there is no one hiding the robot can be moved to
next cabin.

Fig. 10: Snapshot from the skype application in laptop

As the floor has tiles robot movement is not hindered

much and it can travel fast.
Fig. 13: Snapshot of the office surveillance video from the laptop

Figure 14 shows the surveillance video in outdoor

environment for instance the playground. Here the ground is
usually of sand or rocky stones so it is tough to guide the
vehicle and maintain speed.

Fig. 11: Snapshot of surveillance video from skype app installed in

smartphone

The Figure 12 shows surveillance video from the

skype application installed in the phone.This snapshot was
taken during the daylight and it shows office cabin. This video Fig. 14: Snapshot of video surveillance in the outdoor environment
is transmitted to the connected skype account in the laptop and
as the floor is made of tiles robot movement is not hindered
much and it can travel fast.

Fig.12: Snapshot of surveillance video from the phone showing office Fig. 15: Snapshot of surveillance video from laptop showing an outdoor
environment
In Figure 15 the surveillance video shows an outdoor surveillance video where data is not saved, so even though the
environment like a playground in daylight. The robot can be robot is captured it won't reveal any data.
used to search bombs and weapons or diffuse mines in the
outdoor environment. VII. CONCLUSION
V. COST AND PERFORMANCE COMPARISON
Small Unarmed Ground Vehicle (SUGV) robot is
As shown in Table-I the average cost of the implemented developed for army operations and thus save life of the
system is very much less than other previous systems soldiers during a terrorist attack or any dangerous mission.
performing the same task. The movement of the robot is controlled by the smartphone
and can be moved in any direction. On top of the robot a
TABLE I. COST AND PERFORMANCE COMPARISON smartphone with android application installed is mounted and
the live surveillance video gained from it gives an insight to
Implemented
Parameters Previous system the environment of the war zone. It can be used to know
system
exactly how many people are hidden in a room and based on
Cost Less(Approx 6k) High(>25k) that action can be taken by the armed forces. The SUGV robot
Less(approx is cost effective and can be easily produced and distributed. It
Max Speed Average(10km/h)
6km/h) can also be used as a home surveillance robot.
Too high(Approx.
Payload weight Less(Approx.1-3 kg)
10-25kg) REFERENCES
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VI. SECURITY
Range of HC-05 Bluetooth module is around 100 feet,
this means that the robot can be easily controlled in that
specified area. The Bluetooth HC-05 module can only be
connected to one Smartphone at a time, this means that the
robot can be controlled by one Smartphone at any given time.
If the attacker manages to bypass the HC-05 module's security
and start to control the robot then the main controller or the
authorized defense personnel will get a pop up message that
the device has been disconnected on the Arduino Uno
application indicating that the robot has been hijacked or
hacked. The Skype account is used to only transmit the live