E-YANTRA

This was the report we prepared for our e yantra competition hope you find it useful 

e-Yantra

Robotics Competition

State the scope of the theme assigned to you.

A seed sowing robot is an autonomous seed sowing machine as its name

implies .due to the increasing population the land available for agriculture is

rapidly diminishing, thus reducing the agricultural productivity. Today it has

become necessary to increase the agricultural productivity of India, to meet the

increasing demand of the ever increasing population 

      In the recent years the green house concept has emerged as a faithful

alternative for Indian farmers, where plants are grown in a controlled

environment suitable for them thus increasing the productivity.

The drawbacks of manual seed sowing in a green house are

• Increased time consumption

• Decline in the rate of production

• Wastage of precious seeds

Thus the basic remedy for this is the automation of the seed sowing process, and

thus building an autonomous seed sowing robot is the primary and most

important step in automation of this process.

Building Modules:

Identify the major building blocks in the robotic system that needs to be

designed for your theme. 

• Sensors: sharp IR range sensors, black line sensors

• Actuators: DC motors, servo motors.

• Power supply

• Signal conditioning  unit(ADC etc)

•  processing unit

Actuators:

              

List all the actuators currently present on FIREBIRD V robot and also the

essential actuators required for designing the robotic system in your theme.

A seed sowing robot requires the following list of actuators for its specified

task

Available on firebird

• Servo motor (0-180’ rotation): required in the mechanism for

controlling the position of the sensors.

• DC motors: required for primary motion of the robot along the arena

External Actuators:

• Servo motors(0-360’ rotation) : required in the mechanism for rotation

by a specific angle for dropping a single seed at a time

Explain the mechanism for controlling the actuators on your robot.

• Servo motor(0-180’ rotation): this servo would be used to exactly orient

the nozzle above the hole detected in order to prevent dropping it

outside the hole

•  DC motors: there motion would be controlled depending on the line

sensor reading

• Servo motors (0-360’ rotation): they would be rotated by a specific

angle to drop the required number of seeds in the hole. like for dropping

1 seed a rotation of 45 degree is rotated.

Environment sensing

Explain the functioning of environment sensing technique used by FIREBIRD V

robot in your theme.

• Line sensors: help the robot move across the arena along the line.

The three line sensors give different reading on black and white surface as

white reflects all of the light incident on it while black absorbs the light

incident .a program can be written depending on this values of the sensors

such   that  the   robot  moves  along  the  line  and  self  orients  itself  when   it

deviates from the line.

• Sharp IR range sensors: Depending on the values of the IR range sensors

the operation of the different actuators can be controlled. IR range

sensors give the distance of a surface depending on the angle of

reception of the light and thus are more accurate than ordinary range

sensors which give distance depending on the intensity of the received

light.

• IR proximity Sensors: The proximity sensors provided with the robot are

used to maintain a safe distance from the thermocol sheet to prevent

any damage to the arena.

• Servo motors: Depending on the processors output and the program

these actuators would be switched on or off.

Power Management

Explain the power management system required for a robot in general and for

FIREBIRD V robot in particular.

• Servo motors: the servo motor require 5-10 volts supply  and 500-1amp

of current depending on its application

• Dc motors: They are powered by internal “v mot” supply, a l293D IC is a

motor driver IC which is used to provide a maximum of 600 mA of

continuous and 1A of starting current to the two motors.

• Sensors: on board sensors are supplied by the  battery connected

      5 v supply is used to power the IR range sensors which a supply a            

additional of 400 mA of current for external load

While a 3.3 v supply is used to power the white line sensors with an   

additional supply capacity of 100mA.

Navigation Scheme

Explain in brief the basic navigation technique for path traversal in the arena.

Explain the concept and list the components required for basic navigation.

Components required for navigation:

• Sharp IR range sensors

• Line sensors

NAVIGATION SCHEME:

       The line following sensors available at the bottom of the fire bird five would

the primary component required for its navigation across the arena along the

line .Besides this the Sharp IR range sensors would help the robot detect Hole and

execute the programmed code on detection of the hole .the sharp IR range

sensors will control the Operation of the mechanism.

      Thus the combination of these two sensors would help the robot transverse

across the arena and help complete the specified task.

Challenges

What are the major challenges that you can anticipate in addressing this theme?

• SEED DROPING MECHANISM:

One of the major challenges would be to design an accurate and efficient

mechanism right from scratch, to drop specified number of seeds in every

hole.

• SERVO MOTION MANAGEMENT:

Based on the analysis done by us on the desired mechanism, we would

require utmost 3 servos of which one is included in the kit. The major

challenge would be to manage the order of operation of these servos as

operating more than one servo at a time may draw a large amount of surge

current damaging the microcontroller.

• POWER MANAGEMENT:

Since we would be using servos and sharp IR range sensors we need to

take into consideration there current and voltage ratings, and control

there switching so that they are off when not in use thus preventing

drainage of excess power