Difference between revisions of "S15: Swarm Robots"

Revision as of 23:14, 22 May 2015

Grading Criteria

Swarm Robots

Abstract

Swarm robots deals with coordination of multiple robots. The collective behavior of the robot swarm emerges from interaction with each other and surroundings. All the Robots can communicate with each other. The position of each robot is determined and monitored by an overlooking camera. Large number of simple robots can perform complex tasks in a more efficient way than a single robot, giving robustness and flexibility to the group.

Objectives & Introduction

• Initially all robots will go in search of the target, as and when the target is located, the bot which is near the target sends out a message about its present location to all other bots.

• Overhead camera serves the purpose of determining the location of individual bots.

• Once the message regarding the target position is received by other bots, each of them will move towards the target.

Team Members & Responsibilities

• Team Member 1
  • Abhishek Gurudutt - OpenCV Image detection and OpenCV co-ordinate mapping.
• Team Member 2
  • Bhargava Sreekantappa Gayithri - PID controller & PWM
• Team Member 3
  • Chinmayi Divakara - Wireless communication and synchronization
• Team Member 4
  • Praveen Prabhakaran - OpenCV co-ordinate mapping. OpenCV and SJone board communication.
• Team Member 5
  • Tejeshwar Chandra Kamaal - PID controller & PWM

Schedule

Show a simple table or figures that show your scheduled as planned before you started working on the project. Then in another table column, write down the actual schedule so that readers can see the planned vs. actual goals. The point of the schedule is for readers to assess how to pace themselves if they are doing a similar project.

  1) Hardware - Design of Motor Controller, 
     Robot assembly
  2) Software - OpenCV environment setup, 
     Basic video processing   

  1) Hardware, OpenCV setup - Completed  
     Problems Encountered -  Hardware Bug discovered in version 0.1 
     of motor controller circuit after testing.      
  2) Software - Problems during filtering video for certain colors. 

  1) Communication between OpenCV to SJone board 
     using DB9 connector and UART3   
  2) PWM and Ultrasonic sensor drivers
  3) Object detection and mapping
  4) Wireless communication between two nodes

  1) Modification of RS232 header file to support windows 7 file API. 
     Was not able to communicate between OpenCV and SJone board using UART0
  2) Unable to receive the echo signal and was not able to use 
     ultrasonic sensor without interrupt.
  3) HSV values had to be detected to recognize particular color. 
     Had difficulties to find the HSV values for a color. 
     This was solved by writing a program to print the 
     HSV value of the color that is pointed in the video.
  4) Packet sending and recieving failure. System crash while 
     transmitting and recieving packets 

 1) PID Controller Design
 2) Co-ordinates communication between nodes
    and boundary mapping
 3) Inter board communication and 
    communicating the Co-ordinates

  1) Point to point travel using PID control loop. Code written PID tuning in progress.
  2) Object detection completed. Co-ordinates mapping in progress.
  3) Inter board communication completed.

 1) Integration, testing and Bug fixing 

Parts List & Cost

Design & Implementation

The design section can go over your hardware and software design. Organize this section using sub-sections that go over your design and implementation.

Hardware Design

Discuss your hardware design here. Show detailed schematics, and the interface here.

• 
• File:S15 244 grp12 schematic.pdf
• File:S15 244 grp12 Motor Controller schematic.pdf
• 

Hardware Interface

In this section, you can describe how your hardware communicates, such as which BUSes used. You can discuss your driver implementation here, such that the Software Design section is isolated to talk about high level workings rather than inner working of your project.

Software Design

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Implementation

This section includes implementation, but again, not the details, just the high level. For example, you can list the steps it takes to communicate over a sensor, or the steps needed to write a page of memory onto SPI Flash. You can include sub-sections for each of your component implementation.

• Detecting and locating robot - This is achieved with the help of an overhead wireless camera. Camera access and detection of robot is implemented on a computer with the help of openCV library. Each robot will be updated with its present location.
  • Detection of robot : Each robot is of a different color. This will help in differentiating the robots from one another. Images from the camera are captured every 30 millisecond, these images obtained will be in RGB format which is converted to HSV format. The converted image is then filtered. Hue(H), Saturation(S) and Value(V) are different for different color, hence the image can be filtered by defining the range for each color. The filtered image is then processed to remove noise.
  • Location of robot : Each filtered image contains only one object, the outline of the object is found out and checked if the area is more than threshold. If the area is less than the threshold, then it is discarded as noise. The spatial coordinates of the outlined image is found out which gives the position of the robot.
• Communicating locations to robots: Co-ordinates of each robot detected through openCV is transmitted to a SJone board using using DB9 connector and UART3 on SJone board. Each co-ordinate is sent with a header and Robot ID.

Implementation is explained with the help of a flowchart:

• If the value output from IR sensor is less than a threshold then it informs the robot that the target is found.

Flowchart for implementation of IR sensor:

• SJone board connected to computer on which openCV is run, receives the Robot Id and Co-ordinates which is transmitted to respective robots. The robots keep track of its location and direction of its movement is determined.

Testing & Technical Challenges

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Include sub-sections that list out a problem and solution, such as:

My Issue #1

Discuss the issue and resolution.

Conclusion

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Project Video

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Project Source Code

• Sourceforge Source Code Link

References

Acknowledgement

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References Used

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Appendix

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