ROBOTICS PROJECT IDEAS FOR ENGINEERS USING MICROCONTROLLER

 Mechatronics Engineering Students Degree Projects Robotics and Microcontrollers

Robotics Introductions

The modern world will be functioning on robots. All the activities being performed by human will be switched to perform by robots. Everywhere will be automation. It is evident by the increase of automation everywhere around us. There are good number of people who support the use of robotics in automation. With the robotics, the complex tasks can be done easier with higher precision as whereas the same done by human are subject to the human errors. Robotics is a field which is emerging more and more. The robotics as profession is taken with passion to learn and to solve different problems in the environments where are human cannot perform jobs. There are various fields involve in the robotics to complete the task done by robots like programming, electronics, mechanics, automation, and computer science etc. Therefore we can say that the filed Robotics, itself is a multidisciplinary field based on suitable combination of fields and engineers belonging to mechanical, electrical and computer science. To do final year degree projects of electrical engineering, mechanical engineering or computer engineering or electronics engineering in the field of robotics the project ideas are presented below to help the student of engineering universities.

1.     The Automatic Cleaning Robot

The robot used for the cleaning of any special area are designed in such a way that the robot shall perform the cleaning task efficiently. It is normally done by use of some marking or boundaries where we are going to deploy a robot for say cleaning task. The automatic cleaning of an area or a room will be done using microcontroller based a robot which will identify the area using borders with IR technology. The robot will be allowed to follow any path to cover the entire room, it may be straight or zigzag, but the condition is that it shall remain with that area. The sensors in this robot could be optionally the ultrasonic or IR. The robot system will carry a vacuum cleaner attached to it. The dust will be collected in a bin attached to the vacuum cleaner. Besides the main task of cleaning there would be some decoration task of the system like to display the time of utilization and area that it cover to interpret the efficiency of the robot application. The microcontroller used in this project will be programmed to follow the set rules and display the parameters on a LCD attached at the front panel to give specific information to user.

2.     Robotic Vehicle to Pick and Place Things

In industry the automation is key to have maximum production. The robot are helping industry in variety of applications. One of the important development in the robotic field is the development of a robot which is used to pick and place things in a specific order. This type of robot are usually designed custom based, focusing the need of industry where these are required to deploy. The specially designed robot will provide the services for the movement of object in any of desire direction and arises like horizontal or vertical, and rotational. Similarly robot can be made to provide rotational as well as linear movement. The number of arms of robot are also flexible choice. The student can take this project to develop a 2D or 3D movement robot with two or three arms. The development of robot of such types will be a challenging task for engineering student focusing the available resources. 

 

3.     Robot for the carrying object and climbing at stairs in harsh environment

The Use of Robots to transport objects or goods in harsh environment is a challenging task, especially when the transportation is to be performed in off road like on stairs. There will be some complex mechanical design required for application like this. The student of mechatronics engineer can more focus on this project. The route of transportation will have to be feed in the memory of robot and it will be edited every time the root has to be changed for alternatively a compunction protocol shall be adopted. The GPS system will also be an integral part of this application. The robot will be capable enough for climbing over obstacles and can climbing the stairs. This application will be suitable in a harsh environment where the human are not easy to perform this task due to multiple reason like because of high temperature or incomputable chemical environment. 

4.     Control of Robotic vehicle with help of Touch Screen

The robotic vehicle are often used for various tasks. The wheels, motors, microcontrollers or Arduino are used to make a robotic vehicle. There are some input devices are attached to provide command and control to the robotic vehicles. In this project, it is proposed to attach a touch screen with other electronics components like microcontroller, microprocessors, ARM or Arduino to get input from touch screen and execute the commands accordingly. There would be many ways to establish communication channel with the main CPU of robot and the touch screen which will includes the use of RF technology if we have to control the robot from a small distance or RS-232 serial communication, or Bluetooth communication, or even WIFI can be used for this purpose. Thus there are many variation which can be worked to design a robotics project innovatively. 

5.     Robot to Follow Line of Trajectory

The robot which flow a path through the scanning of a line trajectory is called a line follower robot. The thick line is drawn on the floor or other suitable surface. The robot detect the line by using sensor based on infrared (IR) or other optical devices. The line tracing is done real time during the execution of motion command to robot. There are two motors with wheels attached to the rear and a castor wheels of robot to support it for necessary movements. The development of a robot which is capable to flow a line trajectory path is a nice robotic projects for the final year engineering students. The microcontroller used in such a robot is 8051 sufficient because there are no complex calculation involve n these robots. They are design just to flow the track. The straight line is not necessarily required, you can give any complex path to robot depends upon the resolution of detection. 

6.     Solar panel Cleaner Robot

The use and deployment of solar plates for the generation of electric energy is increasing day by day. There is always need to keep the solar panel plates clear to required level as much as possible in order to have maximum efficiency of solar plates for maximum generation of electricity from the solar system. For small and medium scale solar system, the cleaning of solar system can be done manually, however for the large scale solar systems, the cleaning of these plates required some automatic robotic development. To clean such a solar system plates, a robot can be very helpful. A robot to help in the cleaning large area spaces can be developed using appropriate microcontroller and battery backups. The engineering students can make this kind of robot for their degree project by using the RF technology in the robot to send movement commands for controlling the direction of motion with specific tools.

7.     Robot to Play Chess

Play chess is a fantastic indoor game all over the world. Now what a nice idea it would be if the robots are playing the chess instead of human. The development of this intelligent robot will be consisting of best approaches in the field of robotics and computer vision for the chess by robot. The code will be written in Python for Raspberry Pi in which the implementation of camera is incorporated. The robot will takes images using the installed camera in order to visual recognize the placement of objects on the floor of chess. The movement of object will be detected by the comparing the images. The robot will use Stockfish which is a chess engine. The use of this chess engine will be essential to recognize the moves of second player and to decide the move of the robot to make.  

8.     Robotic for Vehicle having Metal Detector 

The fabrication of Robotic for Vehicle having Metal Detector involves the use of two types of main systems, one for the control of motion of a vehicle and to the detection of metal. This project can be developed as whole or in parts or in two phases. Some students can have one ready to use system and deploy it on the second system. The metal detection system can be constructed by using 8051 family microcontroller to achieve the control of vehicle. The motion of vehicle can be control by applying the necessary command through the use of any suitable media like remote control, like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth devices. The motor will be used to assist the robot for any specific motion. The use of pushbuttons to send commands for forward, backward, left, and right motion will be required. When a command will be received at the robot by media like RF technology, the command will be interpreted by microcontroller 8051 which will further issue the commands to motors for required motion in the asked direction. The metal detection system will be optionally developed or purchased a ready to use and will be attached to the vehicle to detect the metal around the robot. There will be buzzer or other notification arrangements attached to the robot to give signal on successful detection of metal by the robot. 

9.     Mobile Robot

The robot which is capable to detect the things or obstacles of different nature and change the path accordingly will be a good choice for engineering student to develop as a degree project. The objects found in the path of robot will be detected with help of optical sensor and intelligently robot will change its path real time. The robotic system will be made by using some powerful microcontroller like Raspberry Pi. There is another optional task which can be associated with this robot is to capture the images and store these images on suitable storing media for analyses on later stage. Therefore it is proposed that this system may incorporate a USB camera with the robot which should be capable to interface with a Raspberry Pi. 

10.   Robot to Print 3D Objects

The 3D printing of objects with help of use of robots is an idea to make degree project. It may involve the use of mechanical parts, electronics analog and digital components, Computer or mobile interface, and Microcontroller or Arduino board.  The design at computer or mobile or laptop will be read by microcontroller or Arduino and will be processed and then appropriate commands to run or move the stepper motors and attached arms will be executed using coordinates system. Then the printing will be started with the effective control of ink or laser printing head. The project can be utilized in the industry of textile, or can be used in the industry where the labels of various projects are designed and printed on actual media. The scope of utilization of this three D robotic printing is very vast. Student can do this for the completion of thesis and can do further research to make innovating design.