Arduino based sensors monitoring and actuators control via internet network for autonomous mapping robot

• Main Author: Wijaya, Tomi.
• Other Authors: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/50103
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

In the recent time, internet has been widely used in the society as the media to gather information and also communication activity. This Final Year Project aimed to build a communication interface utilizing internet connection as the media to connect microcontrollers and the peripherals attached on it to the other microcontroller or human recipient. The goal will enable the interface to be used as monitoring system for sensors also actuating system to move actuators attached on the microcontroller, whereby the possibility to communicate between microcontrollers through internet is also possible. The first step of the project would be to understand Arduino microcontroller that was used as the base development platform. Arduino microcontroller was widely used, had ease of extendibility, and also currently still developing. This made the microcontroller favourable to be explored and understood. The exploration in this Final Year Project covered the Arduino Uno, Arduino Mega 2560 and some Arduino shields which were the source of Arduino microcontrollers’ extendibility. The next step of the project was to build the interface that connected Arduino microcontrollers to the internet. This interfacing includes data sending and data retrieving. Data was sent to the internet mainly Pachube.com and Google Docs for sensor monitoring, displacement coordinates recording and also actuating signal information for the actuators. The final step of the project was to integrate Arduino Uno and its shields, gyroscope, and accelerometer together with a Pololu 3Pi robot as the vessel into an integrated mapping robot. By means of odometry, this robot mapped the surroundings in two dimensional floor map format which is produced in Excel file. This robot was solely powered with four AAA batteries and mapped by utilizing wall follower code and also line follower code that enabled the Author to predefine the map result. Displacement coordinates were then sent to Pachube.com and Google Docs to describe live distant data acquisition. At the end of the project, the result obtained were interfacing system for data transmission and retrieval. Both sensor monitoring and actuator control through Pachube.com and Google Docs as the servers were successfully carried out. In addition, a mapping robot was successfully built. A map was produced by the mapping robot to describe the application of this live data transmission and acquisition system. However, further improvement on the mapping robot can still be achieved by better algorithm.