A Bi-directional Prototype Mobile Robot to

Experiment Light Scale Object-Transportation

Schemes
1

Muhammad Bilal Khan, 2Muhammad Awais Hussain, 3Khurram Shahzad, 4Sajid Nawaz, 5Muhammad Umar Touseef, 6Raja Jawad Ali Khan.
1,2,3,4,5,6

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Namal College, Mianwali 42250, Pakistan.
(Associate College of Bradford University, United Kingdom)
{1Bilalk2011, 2Awaish2011, 3Khurram2011, 4Sajid2011, 5Umar2011, 6Jawad.ali} @ namal.edu.pk
AbstractIn this paper, we present the control and
implementation schemes of a bi-directional prototype mobile
robot for doing the repetitive tasks. The robot was built with the
fundamental capabilities like autonomous navigation and
autonomous decision making during the path planning stages.
Different sensors were used for the acquisition of the useful data
from the surroundings of the robot. Robots mechanical
structure was supporting the overall scheme of its use as a basic
service transportation robot. A solid gripper was used in order to
pick desired objects inside an arena. The prototype robot
successfully managed to complete the tasks assigned to it with the
given scenarios.
Keywords transportation robot; prototype; service robotics;
autonomous navigation; omni-wheels; micro-controller.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Robots are machines which are aimed to help everyday

human life. Some robots are particular with their use in the
cutting edge research purposes [1], while others are being used
to directly facilitate a set of tasks that are either boring due to
their repetitiveness or difficult due to the given circumstances
for any human [1]. These can be legged robots for rough
terrain [2] [3], chained/tracked robots for un-equal surfaces
[4], underwater actuated robots or wheeled robots for slightly
flat surfaces [5] [6].
Wheeled robots are pretty popular and quiet mature in the
technologys perspective due to their easiness in control and a
long history of effective research. They are being used in a
number of ways to facilitate humans life. A wheeled service
robot is no more different in serving the human life by making
it easier to any other machine, when there is a need to chase a
boring and a tough job. The robot that is being presented here
is a prototype transportation robot with the fundamental
capabilities of a service robot like autonomous navigation,
object search and placement, avoiding the obstacles and
completing the go-to goal behavior. The robot is equipped
with long and short range distance measuring sensors to
acquire the useful data about the surroundings of the robot.
Four Omni-wheels are used for making the robot bidirectional. Complete details are discussed in the subsequent
sequence.

This work is fully funded by Namal College and Namal Education

Foundation. The support was provided during summer 2013.
st
1 author should be addressed as a corresponding author.

978-1-4799-6089-7/14/$31.00 2014 IEEE

Design of the robot.

Autonomous control, decision making and trials

of go-to-goal behavior.

Results, conclusion and future work.

II.

DESIGN OF THE ROBOT

A. Mechanical Design of the Base/Frame

Considering the design of the robot as one of the most
crucial factors, the major importance was given to it. The
design was based on three fundamental aspects i.e. stability,
strength of the skeleton of the robot in overall and meeting the
required task under low budgets [7]. For stability, the major
thing was the selection of the material that not only provides
the diversity for the design based modifications but also that it
should be easy to carry the whole structure on the motors
under the available torque ratings. Aluminum metal was used
during the preliminary manufacturing stages of the service
robot. The mechanical design of the robot was consist of an
aluminum chassis with pre-installed placement for the four
actuators, which are being used to drive the respectively
attached Omni wheels, and a separately mounted object lifting
chained structure, followed by a gripper. Fig. 1 shows the
without electronics installed prototype design of this robot.

Fig. 1.

Initially formulated design of the robot.

After the initial design stages, a go-to-goal scenario was

developed for the robot with a predefined structure, from the
starting point to the destination. Robots Omni-wheels were
providing an excellent support in order to change the
navigational orientation of the robot in two directions. One of
the directions was achieved by moving the opposite wheels
actuators simultaneously with other two on off pulse width
modulation (PWM) signal, and vice versa.
B. Mechincal Design of the Gripper
The gripping structure was connected with two separate
actuators; one actuator was responsible for up-lifting and then
putting the attached object down to a surface, and the other
servo actuator was used to provide contraction and expansion
to the mechanical gripper, during the collection of certain
objects inside an arena. Fig. 2 shows our prototype service
robot with a square object in its gripper.

an equally oriented movement for a straight line path. The

other behavior definition was providing the robot an
interaction based feedback through sensors, that if the robot is
making the contact to an obstacle or not and how to avoid
making such interactions. A separate behavior was defined
when the robot sense a particular object that needs to be
collected. On the same stage, the same behavior definitions
were responsible of providing a set of commands to the
wheels actuators to stop at a specific distance from the object
based on the dimensions of the robot and its gripper, on front.
Every command by the processing unit was executed
through a number of H-bridges for each actuator. Every Hbridge consists of a number of integrated circuits (ICs) like
IR-1010 n-channel mosfet, 7805 and 7812 voltage regulators,
and 2110 ICs for generation of a square wave.
The details of the different behaviors are given as follows.
Fig. 3 shows the overall process structure of the robot, where
three behavior definitions are fed to the micro-controller unit
that is running a number of servo actuators based on the initial
definitions and the received data from the available sensors.
1)
Behavior 1: This behavior is defined to ensure
that the robot should keep moving on its way until it sense an
object to lift. A pseudo code representation for this behavior
can be observed below.
Parameters initialization;
Defining sensors pins on controller;
Other similar definitions and configurations of pins;
Void module PWM1, PWM2, .,PWM6;

//Speed controlmodules

Void moduleclock ;

//Clock controlmodules

Void modulealign ;

//Alignment of wheels and respective PWMmodules

Void Main ( )
{
Module Clock, configuration;

//Call back modules

Case: when no object sensed in front of the gripper

Fig. 2.

Mechanical gripper holding a square shaped object.

Move forward;
III.

AUTONOMOUS CONTROL AND DECISION MAKING

&&

There are a number of ways to move a robot. But the most

commonly used classifications are either self-controlled/semiautonomous and fully autonomous control schemes.
Our robot was built on the fully autonomous control
scheme, to complete a set of different tasks. Four IR sensors
were integrated with a 16 bit PIC 33F family digital signal
microcontroller to process the raw data, which was acquired
from the surroundings of the robot. Different return values
from the sensors clearly help our robot in order to plan its path
and then further navigation till the goal position. For making a
decision based on the sensory feedback, a number of behavior
definitions were defined. One of the behavior definitions was
to help the robot to adjust its servo motor speeds and to make

//Align and pivotmodules

Maintain the distance to the neighboring wall;

//based on sensors return value
Break (when the object sensed)
}
}
2)
Behavior 2: This behavior was defined to make
the robot move towards the object and is using most of the
availiable sensors to achieve the maximum accuracy. Two IR
sensors were used to align the rotation of both the wheels and

Fig. 3.

A sketch of the overall structure.

Fig. 4. Picture of the arena in 2D (top view), and 3D (side view); adopted and redefined with prior permissions from CRG. National Robo-sprint 2013 arena
book [8], with our scheme in execution (two identical arenas)

a separate IR sensor was used to maintain the distance from

the second wall. A clear picture of the arena can be observed
in the Fig. 4, which shows an example of a go-to-goal
behavior and an extra job of collecting the object from the
middle of the path and placing it to a destination basket.
For the execution of this behavior, a less detailed and
generalized pseudo code representation can be seen in the
following.

Void Main ( )
{
//Previous behavior definitions to continue
Module PWM to continue
If (ADC Value< Valuerequired || ADC Value > Valuerequired )
{

Void Main ( )
{

}
While (Sensor5 returned values showing the placement basket
in the range)
{

//Previous definitions to continue

If (Sensors3,4 responding)
{
Cut off the current PWM signals;
Initiate the opposite ones; //Alignmodules
Move forward until (Snesors(3,4 values) = Specific Distance)
Module clock_delay ( );
PWM at grippers actuator for a specific interval;
PWM at the actuator of chained structure, to pull off;
}
End of all modules;
}
Orientation of different sensors can be viewed in the given
Fig. 5.

Go for Optimum definition adjustment of PWM;

Until (ADC Value = Valuerequired )

Continue for a specific distance;

Clock_Delay ( );
PWM at lifting mechanism in ve for a specific timeperiod;
PWM at Gripper in ve for a specific time period;
Clock_Delay ( );
}
}
End of all module definitions;
}

IV.

PROBLEMS WITH THE CURRENT STRUCTURE AND

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

Fig. 5.

Location of sensors on the base of the robot

3)
Behavior 3: Using behavior 3 defintions, our
robot managed to complete its path planning scheme till the
destination point and fulfilled the go-to-goal behavior , while
working as a prototype service robot. Most of the job was
done using differential drive approach or trajectory completion
using the adjustment of the PWM signals until the goal
position was sensed by the robot. A simply explained pseudo
code of this behavior is given here.

Although things were considered in details while designing

the mechanical structure, but during the experimental stages,
we came to know about the two possible issues that can affect
the performance of the robot. First problem was associated
with the gripper. Our gripper was designed in such a way that
it should hold a light object of known dimensions, but during
the on-field experiments we found out that sometimes the
servo actuator behaved against the predictable way and made
too much grip over the object, resulting in damage of the
object. To sort out this phenomenon, we modified the gripper
structure in such a way that now it should lift the object
instead of making a grip over it. This not only solved the
problem but also released one of our servo motors. The overall
behavior definitions remain the same with only exception of
neglecting the commands for gripper. Another issue was the
slip of Omni-wheels on our assumed flat surface. After
considering the wheel alignment, we found out that this was
because of the unequal surface of the arena. After reinspecting the arena, unequal places were filled with soft cards
and glued to the surface. Sensor orientation was also keenly
observed and re-oriented at times, when there was an issue in
data collection from these.

V.

RESULTS

After the execution of all the above mentioned behaviors,

the robot managed to successfully complete a go-to-goal

scheme that can be viewed in the following set of run-time

snap shots from the arena.

We are grateful to Dr. Amir Khurram Rashid, Mr. Jawad

Ali Khan, Mr. Adnan Yaquob, and all the staff at the Robotics
and Electronics labs in Namal College for their continuous
support. We are also very thankful to our colleagues from
teams Robo-sprint 13 for their kind suggestions during this
work. We acknowledge the technical support from Dr. A.Q.
Khan institute of technology in the mechanical structure
manufacturing. Thanks to the reviewers for their valuable
comments to improve this paper further.

References
[1]
[2]
[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

Fig. 6.

VI.

Robot during the experimental stages.

CONCLUSION, LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE WORK

The presented robot was experimented with the defined

behaviors and the robot managed to complete the assigned
tasks successfully. Using its sensors and interpreting the
acquired data through the micro processing unit, a go-to-goal
scheme was achieved successfully. A gripper attached with a
chained structure was used to lift an object and then to place it
in a basket, while reaching the destination. Looking at some
problems, gripper was modified into the lifting mechanism
while still fulfilling the required work. The presented robot
should be considered as a prototype of a basic yet effective
service robot and can be used for low intense and repetitive
tasks, more particularly in light scale object transportation.
Considering the robot a prototype, hence it has limited set of
capabilities to perform some tasks of heavy nature. This is
because of its current structure that cant support beyond the
limited capabilities, it has. But it can be modified in a number
of ways for taking the required results. We are using servo
motors with fair torque ratings. And if we can improve the
provided torque by replacing these with motors of better
torque and current-draw ratings, the overall performance of
this prototype transportation robot can be enhanced.

Acknowledgment

[7]

[8]

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Appendix
Motors/Servo pair

Adopted path

Variation in
speeds/PWM

1&3 (wheels)

Alongside the wall 1

Linear or equally
adjustable PWM signals

2&4 (wheels)

5&6 (Lifter and gripper)

1&3 (wheels)

2&4 (wheels)

5&6 (Lifter and gripper)

TABLE I.

Just at the time of

sensing the object 1,
and path adopted
straight towards the
object
Right on the object
Maintaining a
distance from wall 2
(Using a distance
sensor)
When distance
sensor senses the
placement basket,
robot goes straight
towards the goal
position.
Right at the goal
basket

Linear or equally
adjustable PWM signals
Respective changes to
pick the object from the
basket.
Variations with nonlinear behavior.

Linear PWM signals

provided
Reverse PWM signal to
drop down and place the
object in the basket.

MOTOR ADJUSTMENT PROTOCOL TABLE FOR

DIFFERENT PATHS.