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
