Ball-Scorer: Design and fabrication of an autonomous ball scoring robot

Ball-Scorer is a differentially driven autonomous robot that was fabricated to compete in National Engineering Robotics Contest (NERC) 2008. This paper discusses the development of each component of the robot that is designed to pick up the balls from ball stand by navigating through a grid of white lines and potting these balls into goal posts of different heights. The sensory system of robot comprises of infrared sensors, potentiometers and bump switches. Three controllers namely proportional integral, proportional and proportional integral derivative are designed using root locus technique for navigation, ball picking and ball launching systems respectively. These controllers are then implemented using a single chip low cost AT89C52 microcontroller. Results are presented to show the validity and performance of the entire system. The robot can also be utilized in class room for teaching electromechanical and control systems principles.