Year 2 Project: 'Follow me' Car

Our work: 1. Refine the wire length in a proper visualization 2. Add some “feedback” functions to effectively control and monitor the car.  Method: Firstly, reduce the redundant wires such on the polarity. Next, to improve the integrated system, the feedback, as the significant part in a system, should be considered by adding monitor. The buzzer was chose as the output signal to inform customer that the car is out of limiting distance (50 cm) from their position. Two pins on the buzzer, one for ground and the other is for pin on Arduino, which could be activated by processor. Finally, the initial speed of car is too fast to easily test. Therefore, the PWM number was adjusted to 150 as the minimum number which could drive the motors. It is also have an interval to calculate the codes during the movement. What is more, the application of this model was re-discussed as the “auto-convey”, for example, it could be applied in factory, bank and supermarket. It will r...

Our work: 1.      Upgrade the construction by removing a slaver Arduino on the car 2.      The car initially could recognize the signal source and have some response movements. Method: The original hypothesis is to modulate each function as a component model. The alternative way is to synthesize the total car by using only one processor, which means impose one master processer instead of attachment slaver. Thus, there are only one master and one slaver communicating with wireless modulation which called as 315 mhz remote control. After connecting each wire, the predictable result is that when one distance of slaver ultrasonic is near to that of master, the wheels will rotate. These testing programs only ensure the conception was correct. The most complex part is to constrain the condition codes to make the response sense. In details, three slaver distances on the car compare to the distance on the controller, which difference is...

Our work: 1.      Focus on solving the communication problems between two Arduinos 2.      Solve the problems about transfer information by blue tooth module 3.      Connect the ultrasonic sensors to the breadboard Method: Firstly, we connected two Arduinos by linking their ‘tx’ and ‘rx’ pins. Next, we connected two ultrasonic sensors to the Arduino Nano. Next, we did some programming to transfer the distances detected by the ultrasonic sensor in the Arduino Nano to the Arduino Mega. After the transformation process was tested to be successful, we connect a pair of blue tooth sensor to the Arduino Mega and another Arduino Nano (this is different from the one we used to detect the distance). Next, we connected an ultrasonic sensor to the new Nano and did some programming. We wanted to transfer the distance detected by the new Nano to the main Mega and then compared the distances detected by these two Nanos. ...

Our work: 1.      Build the body of the automatic following car 2.      Collect some data about the communication between two Arduinos. Method:  Firstly, we used a plank to simulate the ‘body’ of the carriage. Secondly, some screws and nuts were used to fix the motors to the plank. Next, we used a motor driver L293D to control the speed and the direction of the two motors at the same time. We found some information of this IC in the internet. The interpretations of each pin mode of this motor driver can be found in the figure below. The link of that web page is: https://roboindia.com/tutorials/nodemcu-motor-driver-pwm Figure 1: The pin mode of L293D After learning some basic knowledge of the L293D, we connected the output 3, 4 and GND of the L293D to the motor and the input 3, 4 and enable1/2 to the Arduino. Next, we started to program the motor. The codes can be seen in the figure below. We set the inputs and the outputs...

  Recently, automatic technologies are increasingly being employed to make everyday tasks simpler and easier. Therefore, we decide to develop the automatic following technology. This technology has a very broad applications. For example, this technology can be used in an automatic following luggage. That means, the users do not need to pull their luggage because their suitcases will follow them automatically. In addition, this technology can also be used in some factories. O nce the automatic following technology is put to use, no more manpower will be wasted to transport weights. All the wagons can follow one person automatically. We plan to design an automatic following car as an example of the automatic following technology. The prototype of this product is shown in the picture below. Our automatic following car is consists of a car and a handle. The car can recognize the handle as a target and follow it.  Figure 1: The prototype of the automatical following c...