Development and design of mobile robot with IP-based vision system

Hardware, firmware and software design of a mobile robot capable of transmitting video information and receiving commands from a controlling point is presented. The hardware design is composed of a PIC18F4620 microcontroller, a UCC27525 MOSFET gate driver, XBee Series 2 OEM RF Module. Firmware design includes the reception, processing and decoding of Zigbee API packets. Based on this decoded information the microcontroller will generate signals to move the motors namely left and right motors with a corresponding direction, either clockwise of counter clockwise. The software part includes the graphical user interface which generates commands sent to the mobile robot. The images from the mobile robot are sent to the central controller. The images are then processed and a command is generated. The command is formatted in API format and then sent to the mobile robot. Testing of the system is done by experimentation. Three parameters are tested which are influenced by four parameters. Image recognition is measured while varying the distance. Also image recognition is measured while varying the luminance of the environment. The received signal level is measured while varying the distance. Lastly the accuracy of the movement of the mobile robot is also measured while varying the target position. The results showed that the distance used by the researcher has no significant effect on image recognition. The results showed also that image recognition is unaffected with the luminance of 230-1590 lumens. The mobile robot will respond in an optimum range of one meter and can respond from one to ten meters.