Design and development of a wireless emergency start and stop system for robots

This paper develops a wireless communication system that connects robots with many remote control devices used by many different users. The most important issue of this system is safety. To get high safety level a quick and efficient communication system is required. The emergency system and its communication system must work in parallel and independently of the main control of the robot. The robot must react to an emergency signal, but as a previous step, it must make sure that the security system is enabled and it so must also have some knowledge of how many remote control devices are related and if any of them has lost the wireless connection. Besides all the research and design stage to develop the communication system, the system has been implemented and tested. To build it, a microcontroller Arduino Fio and a radio frequency module Xbee has been used. Finally, the system has been tested in order to characterize the communication system, settling, connection time and the battery life.