• 1
    What is an LFR?

    LFR stands for Line Following Robot. The line it follows could be white, black, any other colour, or even transparent. All what matters is, the robot must follow the line.

    Even though it sounds simple, it is a struggle for most of the 1st Year Engineering students. It is a struggle to understand, then implement, then analyze the errors, and make corrections accordingly. After a couple of days, most likely a week, an LFR is finally ready to be run on a line.

    This article however does not contain any code, on how to make it. We shall only share an example of the LFR robot in the form of a video.

  • 2
    Project prototyping

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  • 3
    Get Started

    Line Following Robots are pretty basic and have a readily-available instruction on building it on Internet. Keeping the usual LFR aside, the one we shall be building is different. Why is that?
    1. It has a purpose.
    2. It is pretty smart.

    image.png

    In other words, this LFR is "IoT based Smart PID tuned Maze Solver". It can be put anywhere in the maze, and let the robot do a dry run. While performing the dry run, it maps the whole maze and waits for the user to provide a destination. During the speed run, on providing a destination, the LFR reaches the spot through shortest path available.

    Let us proceed further, by following a roadmap to achieve the goal -

    Background

    Let us first understand how the data shall proceed to be captured, shared to internet, and converted to a visual map.

    Since we shall be using the IR Sensor Array to keep reading the Line, we also require to know the distance of every path so that the map drawn out is accurate and does not have a false narrative on which path to proceed with.

    • Using a rotary encoder, and a simple formula, find the distance of every path before here is a turn on the path. Then, based on the turn it takes (left or right) we'd also get the turns to be shared with cloud.
    • We can further store the data on cloud in a server or even JSON string. It can be comma/hyphen separated, and similar to 'F10-R-F20-L-F5-L-F15-R-F10'. In this case, F - Forward, R - Right, L - Left, and based on the distance (in cm) we get the numbers on how far the robot went forward. For example - F10 = forward for 10 cms. Most likely the data would be stored on JSON server.
    • To build an interactive Map, it is time consuming. It also comes under 'Expert' level on explaining the steps on building the whole project.
    • The data from the JSON is later received on the Web Application, where it the data goes under a few steps to create a visualization of the Path Map. This path map ought to be interactive, i.e. every vertex and start/end of line should have a node point on it. This node point must act like a button, that is used for - Recalling the bot in the location - Setting Pickup/Drop Location - Avoid the path through the node





    This map can later be used for tracking the position of the robot. So, whenever there is a breakdown or required to reach the spot of robot the exact location can be noted