MT-368L Mechatronics Systems Design

Mechatronics System Design

(End Semester Project)

Fruit Harvesting Robot for NERC 2020

GROUP MEMBERS

Mohsin Ali 170597

Zeeshan Haider 170648

Saif Ur Rehman 170549

Project Supervisor
Engr. Zargham Raza

Lab Engineer Dpt. of Mechatronics Engineering

Air University, Islamabad

December, 2019
 Fruit Harvesting Robot for NERC 2020

Authors

Mohsin Ali 170597

Zeeshan Haider 170648

Saif Ur Rehman 170549

A project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

BEMTS

Project supervisor

Engr. Zargham Raza

Lab Engineer dept. of Mechatronics Engineering

Air University, Islamabad

December, 2019

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Thanks to Allah almighty, who lavished us with the strength and courage to accomplish this
project successfully we pay our meek gratitude to our supervisor Engr. Zargham Raza and
other faculty members for their guidance and cheering throughout the project.

We do must acknowledge our other faculty members and seniors who encouraged us and
guided us to choose and perform work on this project.

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 Abstract

Agriculture is quickly becoming an exciting high-tech industry, drawing new professionals,

new companies and new investors. The technology is developing rapidly, not only advancing
the production capabilities of farmers but also advancing robotics and automation technology
for the harvesting of crops saving a lot of time. This project presents the design of an
autonomous robot with a robotic arm prototype construction and initial testing of a robotic
gripper for harvesting agricultural products. This project is made for National Engineering
and Robotics competition 2020 keeping in view all rules and regulation and arena made for
the competition.

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 Table of Contents

Acknowledgement……………………………………………………………………………03

Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………04

Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………….05

Objective……………………………………………………………………………………..06

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………..06

Working Principle……………………………………………………………………………06

 How to reach specific tree……………………...…………………………………….07

 How to Pluck fruits…………………………………………………………………..08

Block Diagram……………………………………………………………………………….09

Components used…………………………………………………………………………….09

 Aluminium Base……………………………………………………………………...09
 DC Gear Motors……………………………………………………………………...10
 Ultrasonic sensors……………………………………………………………………11
 Arduino Mega………………………………………………………………………..12
 Robotic Arm………………………………………………………………………….12
 Electromagnet………………………………………………………………………...13
 Encoders……………………………………………………………………………...13
 Accelerometer………………………………………………………………………..14

Mathematical model of Motor………………………………………………………………..15

Control System……………………………………………………………………………….16

Flowchart……………………………………………………………………………………..16

CAD Model…………………………………………………………………………………..17

Code………………………………………………………………………………………….17

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………19

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 Theme Follower NERC 2020

Project Introduction:
The agricultural technology is developing rapidly, not only advancing the production
capabilities of farmers but also advancing robotics and automation technology for the
harvesting of crops saving a lot of time and effort of the farmers. This project is made for a
competition ‘NERC 2020’. The theme for NERC 2020 is an agricultural theme. The focus of
this theme is to create autonomous robots that can simulate the fruit harvesting tasks. There
will be two robots for this purpose: Harvester and Collector.

Our group has made the Harvester is a (9*9) autonomous robotic base with a Robotic arm
mounted on top. This Robotic arm will have to pluck the fruits (ping pong balls) from the
trees and these balls will be transferred to the container in the Collector base which will be
following the Harvester.

Objectives:

Main objectives of the project are:

 To design and Fabricate an autonomous robot for the fruit plucking job

 To make it fully autonomous for its operation the arena.

Working Principle:

The working principle of the robot is according to the arena specifications and the
rules for the competition. In this theme there will be two robots. One robot is acting as the
harvester robot. Its job is to pluck the fruits (ping pong balls) from the trees. The second
robot is called collector bot. The collector robot will carry a container and will collect the
fruits from the harvester after it finishes harvesting fruits from one tree. After collecting all
the fruits from the harvester, the collector bot will reach to a parking spot. The first team to
successfully collect all the fruits and reach the parking spot will be declared the winner.

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 Figure 1: Arena top view

 The entire arena is divided into 8x8 inch grids. Each grid is assigned a row and a
column number. This grid is not represented as lines on the arena. It is for reference
position only.
 The harvester robot will start at the intersection of grid line (4,5) and (9,10) facing in
the direction of the arrow as marked in Figure 1. The collector robot will start at the
intersection of grid line (4,5) and (6,7). The starting position and orientation of the
harvester and the collector bot is fixed.
 The harvester robot may follow the wall marked in the arena as black solid lines to
reach the location of trees. The tree T1 has 2 fruits (Ping-Pong balls), T2 has 3 fruits
and T3 has 4 fruit hanging with it. The harvester robot will pick these fruits from the
trees in a fixed ascending order (i.e. first from T1, then T2 and then T3).

* How to reach specific tree?

An encoder is mounted to an electric motor that provides closed loop feedback signals
by tracking the speed and/or position of a motor shaft. These are usually for the purpose
of monitoring or controlling distance travelled.

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We know the coordinates of starting point and the location of all the trees in the arena.
Using the encoders we can easily reach the target points.

Figure 2: Encoders

* How to pluck the fruits?

Manipulator fixed on the top is used to pluck balls from each tree. Three MG995
servos are used in manipulator all with 180 of rotation each. There are magnets pre loaded
in balls (fruits) attached with trees. These balls will be plucked by activating
electromegnetic coil i.e. connected with robotic arm. When ball is attached with coil,
manipulator will drop this ball to container of collector.

Figure 3: Electromagnet

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Block Diagram:

Figure 4: Block Diagram of Line Follower

Components used:

 Ultrasonic sensor module (3)

 Self-made Motor Driver (5A) using MOSFETS (1)
 Aluminium frame base (Self-made) (1)
 DC gear Motors with built in Encoders (2)
 Arduino Mega (1)
 Lipo Battery 12V (1)
 Robotic Arm (1)
 Electromagnet (1)

1. Aluminium Base:

Generally aluminum and steel are used in making the mobile robot structure because
of their cost and strength advantage. The base for this harvesting robot is made by
aluminium.

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 Figure 5: Top view of robot

Figure 6: Side view of robot

2. DC Gear Motors:

To drive this wheeled robot, DC metal gear motors are used. DC gear motors consist
of an electric DC motor and a gearbox associated with it.

Figure 7: DC Metal Gear Motor

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These gearboxes are used to reduce the speed of the DC motor, meanwhile increasing the DC
motor torque. Therefore we get lower speed and higher torque as required by using a gear
motor. As a result more stable and smooth drive is given to mobile robot.

Figure 8: Motor Parameters

3. Ultrasonic sensor:

Ultrasonic sensors use sound waves rather than light, making them ideal for stable
detection object. The general principle behind these devices is echolocation: an ultrasonic
signal is sent out, and the time for it to reflect and come back to it is measured, which, along
with the natural speed of sound in the medium, is used to find the distance between the sensor
and the obstacle.

As we can’t purely trust on encoders so we had to use an extra approach to keep on

checking that our destination is reached and encoders are not giving wrong position, We had
two choice either we can use ultrasonic sensor or IR sensor . But we choose ultrasonic sensor
because of its accuracy from a far place also IR sensor are light effecting they do not give
appropriate result when exposed to light. As in arena we have a wall at edges of arena so
ultrasonic sensor can detect the distance from that wall in this way we can check whether we
have reached the specific position or not. This sensor will particularly help when collector
and harvester robot will meet at the end of the wall to transfer fruits.

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4. Arduino Mega:

The Arduino Mega 2560 is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega2560. It has 54
digital input/output pins (of which 15 can be used as PWM outputs), 16 analog inputs, 4
UARTs (hardware serial ports), a 16 MHz crystal oscillator, a USB connection, a power jack,
an ICSP header, and a reset button

 Microcontroller: ATmega2560

 Operating Voltage: 5V

 Input Voltage (recommended): 7-12V

 Digital I/O Pins: 54 (of which 15 provide PWM output)

 Analog Input Pins: 16

 DC Current per I/O Pin: 20 mA

 DC Current for 3.3V Pin: 50 mA+

 Clock Speed: 16 MHz

5. Robotic Arm:

A robotic arm is a type of mechanical arm, usually programmable, with similar

functions to a human arm; the arm may be the sum total of the mechanism or may be part of a
more complex robot. The links of such a manipulator are connected by joints allowing either
rotational motion (such as in an articulated robot) or translational (linear) displacement.

Figure 9: Robotic arm

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6. Electromagnet:

An electromagnet is a type of magnet in which the magnetic field is produced by an

electric current. Electromagnets usually consist of wire wound into a coil. A current through
the wire creates a magnetic field which is concentrated in the hole at center. Unlike a
permanent magnet, the strength of an electromagnet can easily be changed by changing the
amount of electric current that flows through it. The poles of an electromagnet can even be
reversed by reversing the flow of electricity.

Figure 10: Electromagnet using current in coil

7. Encoder:

A motor encoder is a rotary encoder mounted to an electric motor that provides closed loop
feedback signals by tracking the speed and/or position of a motor shaft. There are two main
types of rotary encoder: absolute and incremental. The output of an absolute encoder
indicates the current shaft position, making it an angle transducer. The output of an
incremental encoder provides information about the motion of the shaft, which typically is
processed elsewhere into information such as position, speed and distance.

For straight distance:

For turns:

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 Figure 11: Encoder working

Figure 12: Control system on encoders

8. Accelerometer (ADXL 345):

This accelerometer gives us exact heading of robot in degrees in this way we can check the
orientation of robot as whole arena is pre-defined so this approach will help us as an extra
check weather our robot is on correct position or not .

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This accelerometer also works on I2C protocol /

Figure 13: Accelerometer

Mathematical model of the Motor:

It is an art to convert physical systems into mathematical formulations whose

numerical analysis gives brief information about that system. It describes physical behavior
of a system as a function of time.

Figure 13: Mathematical Model of one Motor

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Control System of Whole Model:

Figure 13: Control system in Simulink

Flowchart:

Figure 14: Flowchart

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CAD Model:

Figure 15: 3D CAD Design

Code:

Connecting to Accelerometer

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Connecting to Ultrasonic sensor

Connecting to Encoders:

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Conclusion:
In this project, we have designed a fruit plucking harvester robot. This agricultural
robot makes the task of harvesting of crops very easy and saving a lot of time and effort of
the farmers. These types of robots are in top researches today because they are the future of
agricultural industries. They can increase the production capabilities of farmers as they will
save their time which they can use in other farming works.

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