Abstraction

This application note provides a learning opportunityfor users to generate

different control modes with various algorithms on an FPGA based portable
platform named Terasic A-Cute car. The A-Cute car is equipped with sensors
and motors. The goal is for users to be in full control of this platform and learn:

1. The design and application of peripheral circuitry for sensor and motor
2. FPGA-based logic design
3. The algorithm of control mode

The project introduced in the following sections is written in VerilogHDL code

only and realized on Terasic DE0-Nano board. A reference design of controlling
A-Cute car through push-button and InfraRed (IR) remote controller is
provided.

Terasic Inc. Line Following Robot in Verilog 1

 Content

Abstraction ............................. 1
Content .................................. 2
Reference Design Overview .. 3
Demo Setup ......................... 10
Rebuild Project .................... 11

Terasic Inc. Line Following Robot in Verilog 2

 Reference Design Overview
.

Terasic A-Cute car is designed to following the black lines with the
implementation of Register Transfer Level (RTL).

The 7 sets of reflective IR sensors equipped are used to track the black lines.
The left and right motors are controlled and turned by the DE0-Nano according
to the data collected from the IR sensors. The control algorithm and data
processing are implemented in Verilog, including the conversion of 8- channel
ADC, where 7 of them handle the conversion of sensors from analog to digital
and the last channel monitors the battery voltage. It also includes IR remote
and manual controlling, as well as the dual motor PWM rotation speed and
steering process. All the functions are implemented on DE0-Nano board

Block Diagram of A-Cute Car

The A-Cute car consists of the followings, as shown in Figure 1

Figure 1 Block diagram of A-Cute car hardware

1. Line Sensor Board: consists of 7 sets of reflective IR sensor

2. SCD (S): includes buck-boost DC/DC IC, motor driver IC, 8-channel ADC,

Terasic Inc. Line Following Robot in Verilog 3

 IrDA, and over-voltage protection components.
3. DE0-NANO (D): an FPGA-based mainboard.
4. Battery (B): a battery pack which includes 4 AA batteries.
5. Auxiliary Wheel (A): support the car body.
6. Motor (M) / Gear (G) / Wheel (W): one set each (left & right) to drive the
car.
Setup the Track

Use anti-glare black tape with approximately 18mm width to setup a circleon a
board or on the floor, where white background is most recommended, as
shown in Figure 2

Figure 2 Track Setting

Mechanism of Track Control

This project implements asimple 3-level line following algorithm to

control the A-Cute car and follow the track. The algorithm uses only the
middle 3 sets of IR sensors and categorized in L0 (left), CN (middle), and
R0 (right).

When the A-Cute car gets close to the black tape, the infrared rays
emitted from the sensors will be absorbed by the black tape and will not
be reflected back to the receiver of the sensors. This is represented by “1”
in digital logic. If the A-Cute car is moving away from the black tape, the
logic would be in “0”. The readings from 6 sensors will be discerned
according to the orientation of the A-Cute car as impartial, small bias to
the right, large bias to the right, small bias to the left, large bias to the left,
and completely off the line.

IMPARTIAL : [L0 CN R0] =111, as shown in Figure 3.

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 Figure 3 Impartial

Prediction to the left and right motors

L_M = same speed
R_M = same speed

Small bias to the right : [L0 CN R0] =110,as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4 Small bias to the right

Prediction to the left and right motors

L_M = slow down the speed in half

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 R_M = same speed

Large bias to the right : [L0 CN R0] =100,as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5 Large bias to the right

Prediction to the left and right motors

L_M = 0
R_M =speed down

Small bias to the left : [L0 CN R0] =011,as shown in Figure 6

Figure 6 Small bias to the left

Prediction to the left and right motors

L_M = speed remain
R_M = slow down the speed in half

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 Large bias to the left : [L0 CN R0] =001,as shown in Figure 7

Figure 7 Large bias to the left

Prediction to the left and right motors

L_M = speed down
R_M = 0

Completely out of line : [L0 CN R0] =000,as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8 Completely out of line

Prediction to the left and right motors

L_M = speed down
R_M = speed down

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 The direction of both motors will be changed from forward to backward.

FPGA Function Block Diagram

Figure 9 shows the control block diagram of Terasic A-Cute car. It includes
seven modules to achieve functions implemented on FPGA.The following
sections will illustrate how each module works.

Figure 9 Block diagram of control system

ADC_CH_OUT

This module acquires ADC data from 7-channel IR sensor and 1-channel
battery power detection. The working frequency is 50MHz It reads data
from 8-channel LTC2308 of SCD in 12-bit through 4-wire SPI interface.
Each cycle takes approximately 33us to read the ADC data of each channel.

The channels 0~6 of ADC are connected to 7 sensors with non-

attenuation 0 ~ 4.09V analog input. The channel 7 of ADC is for battery
voltage detection with 4 times attenuation at 0 ~ 16V analog input.

IR_CTL

There is acomponent on SCD for receiving IrDa signal. When the IRremote
controller sends out signal, the module will decode the signal received
from the component and execute corresponding actions. The only
buttons used from the IR remote control here are Up, Down, Left, Right,
Return, Manual, and Play.

MANUAL_CTL

Terasic Inc. Line Following Robot in Verilog 8

 It will generatecontrol commands according to the KEY0/KEY1/SW0
manually pressed on DE0-Nano.

SELT_TEST

When the A-cute car is powered up, the module will light up the LED on
DE0-Nano to indicate the FPGA is configured successfully.

SOUND_GEN/BLINK_GEN

SOUND_GEN is a sound generator, which generates 625 Hz square wave,

as an acoustic source of the speaker. BLINK_GEN generates0.25 Hz square
wave as the blink source of the LED on DE0-Nano.

TRACE_SENSOR_MOTOR

This module includes three submodules:

a. SENS_RESPONS: It categorizes the digitized values of sensors converted

from ADCin black and white, which are represented as “1” and “0” in
digital logic, when the value is over or below the threshold, respectively.

b. MOTOR_DIR_DET: It determines the rotation speed of left and right

motors to control the direction of A-Cute car based on the result of
SENS_RESPONS.

c. MOTOR_PWM_OUT: It’s the PWM generator for rotation speed of both

left and right motors. The speed and direction are set according to the
input control mechanism of DRV8848PWP (bi-channel motor drive IC)
based on its specifications.

AUTO_TRACE_ON

It generates buffer to delay self-propelling after the A-Cute car receives

command for self-propelling .

Terasic Inc. Line Following Robot in Verilog 9

 Demo Setup
The steps to setup the demonstration are:

 Set the power switch of SCD card to OFF position.

 Insert four AA batteries .
 Set the power switch of SCD card to ON position.
 The demonstration will be executed upon power up. If the default code is
erased, please execute test.bat from the folder below to configure the
FPGA on DE0-Nano:

A-Cute system cd/DE0_NANO_CAR_RTL/demo_batch

 Key Control:
1. Press “KEY0” button and the motors will move wheel forward or
backward,depending on the status of SW0. When the SW0 is set to
“0”, the wheel will move forward. The wheel will move backward
when SW0 becomes “1”.
2. When “KEY1” buttonis pressed, the two lamps on the SCD will
twinkle and there will be a “Beep” sound from the speaker at the
same time.
3. Press and hold “KEY0” button for two seconds and the LED6~4 will
be blinking. Three seconds later, the A-Cute car will start circling
clockwise for five seconds before circling anti-clockwise for another
five seconds. It’ll take total of ten seconds to complete this
demonstration and it can be stopped at any time by pressing“KEY0”
button.
4. Press and hold “KEY1” for 2 secondsand the LED6~4 will be blinking.
Three seconds later, the A-Cute car will move toward the black line.
The mode can be stopped by pressing “KEY1” button.
 Perform IR Remote Control

Figure 10 shows the IR remote control used to interact with the A-Cute car
wirelessly.

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 Figure 10 IR remote control

1. Press the button to move the smart car forward.

2. Press the button to move the smart car backward.
3. Press the button to turn left.
4. Press the button to turn right.
5. Pressthe button tomake the “Beep” sound and the lamp will blink at the
same time.
6. Press the button to enter the traction mode i.e. the A-Cute car will travel
along with the black line.
7. Press the button to exit the traction mode.

Rebuild Project
The project is built in Quartus IIv15.1. Its source code is located underthe
folder : A-Cute system cd/DE0_NANO_CAR_RTL

Open the Quartus project file DE0_NANO_CAR_RTL.qpf and click the menu
item “ProcessingStart Compilation” to start the compilation. Whenthe
compilation is complete, an output file namedDE0_NANO_CAR_RTL.sof will be
generated under the output_files folder.

Terasic Inc. Line Following Robot in Verilog 11