Improving the Movement Precision for Robocon Robot

Abstract

The aim of this project is to study how to precisely control the robot movement through different sensors by generating Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) to control the electric drive. The main flow of building the robot is to design the mechanical and electrical systems. The mechanical design means all the mechanism of the robot, including the pneumatic system that uses compressed air to transmit and control energy, and other components such as electric motor and servomechanism. The electrical design means the signal system and power system in the robot, includes all the electric drive and connection. The system involves many embedded controllers for controlling different subsystems. The hardware devices are controlled by the signals generated from the different controller boards. Even with the mechanical design perfectly simulated with computer-aided design (CAD) software, it cannot be precisely implemented in practice and discrepancy causes errors in real operation. One typical situation is that the robot may not move in a straight line and it may swift to the other side due to slight deviation of assembly. This project aims to reduce the effect of this type of error using different sensors, such as light detection and ranging (LIDAR) and camera to improve the system for specific mechanical design.