25-04-2011, 11:29 AM
Submitted By:
Varun Katoria
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Introduction
A robot is a mechanical or virtual, artificial agent. It is usually an electromechanical system, which, by its appearance or movements, conveys a sense that it has intent or agency of its own. The more the control system seems to have agency of its own, the more likely the machine is to be called a robot. An important feature of agency is the ability to make choices.
The International Organisation for Standardisation gives a definition of robot in ISO 8373, which defines a robot as "an automatically controlled, reprogrammable, multipurpose, manipulator programmable in three or more axes, which may be either fixed in place or mobile for use in industrial automation applications.
Jobs which require speed, accuracy, reliability or endurance can be performed far better by a robot than a human. Hence many jobs in factories which were traditionally performed by people are now robotized. This has led to cheaper mass-produced goods, including automobiles and electronics. Robots have now been working in factories for more than fifty years, ever since the Unimate robot was installed to automatically remove hot metal from a die casting machine. Since then, factory automation in the form of large stationary manipulators has become the largest market for robots. The number of installed robots has grown faster and faster, and today there are more than 1 million robots in operation worldwide.
Line Chaser:
Line Chaser is a machine that can follow a path. The path can be visible like a black line on a white surface (or vice-versa) or it can be invisible like a magnetic field.
Utilization:
Sensing a line and maneuvering the robot to stay on course, while constantly correcting
wrong moves using feedback mechanism forms a simple yet effective closed loop system.
Project Overview
The line chaser robot being made, will have the characteristics of moving over a continuous white line marked over black surface or continuous black line marked over white surface, the robot will be able to move over that line continuously, apart it will also be having features like auto shut down, if the line is not found for a assigned period of time, the robot will stop moving automatically.
To provide intelligence and above stated features to robot, micro controller 8051 will be employed with photodiode as sensor to detect infrared waves imparted from infrared L.E.D. The output from photodiode will be directed to the op-amp used as a comparator, which will compare input from photodiode with a fixed voltage and will give the output in digital form, the output of the op-amp will be fed to the microcontroller(operated at 24MHz) which will performs appropriate process and will directs output to the motor driver IC. Apart from this mechanism the robot will be consisting of 3 status L.E.D.s, which will inform the user virtually of power, running mode and stopping mode.
