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Micromouse Handbook: Tak Auyeung, Ph.D. June 10, 2005

The key to success is the Ability to "make it work" and stay cool when things seem hopeless. The key to failure is a lack of self-discipline.

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Rishiraj Nalandi

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)

278 views104 pages

Micromouse Handbook: Tak Auyeung, Ph.D. June 10, 2005

The key to success is the Ability to "make it work" and stay cool when things seem hopeless. The key to failure is a lack of self-discipline.

Uploaded by

Rishiraj Nalandi

We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.

Available Formats

Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

You are on page 1/ 104

Micromouse Handbook

Tak Auyeung, Ph.D. June 10, 2005

Contents
0.1 Copyright Notice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Before Getting Started

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

11
13 13 13 13 14 15 15

1 Who is likely to succeed? 1.1 Drive to make it work . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Possession of an inquisitive Mind . . . . . . . . 1.3 Ability to stay cool when things seem hopeless 1.4 Self Discipline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2 Timeline 2.1 Backward Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Robot Components
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

19
21 21 22 22 22 23 23 23 24 24 25 27 27 27 27 27 29 29 31 31 31 31

3 Drive System 3.1 The Physics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 Error Consideration . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 Tire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 Wheel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Ball Transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 Bearing, shaft, etc. . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.7 Gearing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8 Motors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.8.1 Types of Stepper Motors . . . . 3.8.2 How to Choose a Stepper Motor? 4 Energy System 4.1 Chemistries . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2 Voltage Regulation . . . . . . . . 4.2.1 Logic Voltage Regulators 4.2.2 Stepper Booster . . . . . 4.3 Energy Calculation . . . . . . . . 4.4 Charging and Discharging . . . .

. . . . . .

5 Chassis 5.1 Materials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.1 Metal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.2 Plastic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

CONTENTS 5.1.3 Wood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Physics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 32 33 33 33 34 34 34 34 35 35 35

5.2

6 Controller 6.1 Processing Requirements 6.1.1 Processing Power 6.1.2 Program Size . . 6.1.3 Data Size . . . . 6.2 Size . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Power Consumption . . 6.4 I/O . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 Development Tools . . . 6.6 Support and Repair . .

. . . . . . . . .

III

Common Robotics Theories

37
39 39 39 39 41 41 42 43 43 45 45 45 45 46 46 46 51 51 51 51 52 52 52 52 53 53 53 54 54 54 54

7 Dierential Steering 7.1 Displacements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Velocity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Acceleration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Stepper Motor Control 8.1 Displacement . . . . . . 8.2 Steering . . . . . . . . . 8.3 Ecient Implementation 8.4 Measuring units . . . . .

. . . .

9 Noise Related Problems and Solutions 9.1 Sources of Electrical Noise . . . . . . . 9.1.1 Basic Theories . . . . . . . . . 9.1.2 Digital Circuits . . . . . . . . . 9.1.3 High Current Circuits . . . . . 9.2 Methods to Reduce Noise . . . . . . . 9.2.1 Basic Theories . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . .

10 PID Loop 10.1 The Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.1.1 The Proportional Term . . . . . . . . . 10.1.2 The Integration Term . . . . . . . . . . 10.1.3 The Derivative Term . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2 From Continuous to Discrete . . . . . . . . . . 10.3 Practical Concerns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.1 Resolution of Output . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3.2 The Resolution of e(t) and Kp . . . . . 10.3.3 The Resolution of the Integration Term 10.3.4 The Resolution of the Dierential Term 10.4 Improving Feedback Resolution . . . . . . . . . 10.4.1 The Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.4.2 A Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.4.3 Practical Considerations . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CONTENTS 11 Logic Interface 11.1 General Interrupt Service Routine Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 Asynchronous and Continuous Code Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5 55 55 55

Micromouse
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

57
59 59 59 59 59 60 60 60 60 61 61 62 62 65 65 65 66 67 67 67 67 67 68 68 68 68 68 68 69 69 69 69 69 70 70 71 71 71 71 73

12 Project Management 12.1 The Necessity . . . . . . . . 12.2 Resource Requirements . . 12.2.1 Finance . . . . . . . 12.2.2 Tools and Materials 12.2.3 Time . . . . . . . . . 12.3 Personnel Issues . . . . . . 12.3.1 Regular Meetings . . 12.3.2 Focus on the Tasks . 12.4 Task Management . . . . . 12.5 Task Forces . . . . . . . . . 12.6 Communication . . . . . . . 12.7 Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . 13 The 13.1 13.2 13.3

Competition Specication for the Maze . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Specications for the Micro Mouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Rules for the Contest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

14 Errors 14.1 Sources of Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.1.1 Wheel Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.1.2 Stepper Motor Errors . . . . . . . . . 14.1.3 Traction Related Errors . . . . . . . . 14.1.4 Maze Tolerance . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2 Reducing Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2.1 Tire Width . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2.2 Wheel Roundness . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2.3 Wheel Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2.4 Traction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.3 Detecting Errors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.3.1 Length to Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . 14.3.2 Sensor Placement (Lookdown Sensors) 14.3.3 Distance Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.4 Error Toloerance and Correction . . . . . . . 14.4.1 Tolerance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.4.2 Correction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Sensors 15.1 Purposes . . . . . . . . 15.2 Sensor Types . . . . . 15.2.1 Range Finding 15.2.2 Existence . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . .

6 16 Sensing 16.1 Common Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.1.1 Failure Rate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.1.2 Repeatability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.1.3 Accuracy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.1.4 Digital versus Analog . . . . . . . . . . 16.1.5 Sample Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.2 Using Common Sensor Types . . . . . . . . . . 16.2.1 Phototransistor-IrED Pairs . . . . . . . 16.2.2 Reective Triangulated Ranging Sensors

CONTENTS 75 75 75 75 76 76 76 77 77 77 81 81 81 81 81 82 82 83 85 85 85 85 86 86 86 86 86 87 87 87 87 88 88 88 88 89 89 89 89 91 91 91 91 91 91 91 91

. . . . . . . . .

17 High Level AI Algorithm 17.1 What is it? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.2 The Ideal Algorithm and the Practical Algorithm 17.3 The Floodll Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.3.1 Basic Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.3.2 The Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.3.3 Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.3.4 Map Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 High-Level and Low-Level 18.1 The Necessity . . . . . . 18.2 Basic Stepper Logic . . 18.3 Sensor Reading Logic . 18.4 High Level Logic . . . . 18.4.1 Mapping . . . . . 18.4.2 Floodll . . . . . 18.4.3 Navigation . . . 18.4.4 Error Correction Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

. . . . . . . .

19 Grading Policy 19.1 Evaluation Method . . . . . . . . . 19.1.1 Quizzes . . . . . . . . . . . 19.1.2 Monthly Reports . . . . . . 19.2 Project Completion Date . . . . . 19.2.1 Group Resources . . . . . . 19.2.2 Design Complexity . . . . . 19.2.3 Completeness . . . . . . . . 19.2.4 Fit and Finish . . . . . . 19.3 Grading by Group or Individually 19.4 Group Grading . . . . . . . . . . . 19.5 Individual Grading . . . . . . . . . 20 Complexity Index 20.1 Generally Speaking . . 20.2 Drive System . . . . . 20.3 Stepper Drive Circuit 20.4 Wall Sensors . . . . . 20.5 Voltage Regulation . . 20.6 Custom Circuit . . . . 20.7 Custom PCB . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . .

CONTENTS

Assembly
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

93
95 95 95 95 96 96 97 97 97 97 98 98 98 98 98

21 PCB Related Assembly Techniques 21.1 Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.1.1 Lighting . . . . . . . . . . . 21.1.2 Magnication . . . . . . . . 21.1.3 PCB Cleaning . . . . . . . 21.1.4 Solding Tools . . . . . . . . 21.1.5 Soldering Tips . . . . . . . 21.1.6 Flux . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.1.7 Desolding Braids . . . . . . 21.1.8 Desoldering Plungers/Guns 21.2 PCB Preparation . . . . . . . . . . 21.2.1 Partitioning a PCB . . . . . 21.3 Soldering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.4 Diagnosis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.5 Desoldering . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Software/Hardware Tools
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

99
101 101 101 102 102 103 103 103 104

22 AVR Programming Tools 22.1 Getting Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.1.1 VMWare Workstation (non-free) . . . . 22.1.2 Installing Debian over the Web . . . . . 22.1.3 Dual Booting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.1.4 Specify Minimal Packages . . . . . . . . 22.1.5 Upgrading to the Unstable Distribution 22.1.6 Get the Rest of the Packages . . . . . . 22.1.7 Get the AVR tools . . . . . . . . . . . .

8 Change log:

CONTENTS

TA 20030911 0838: add change log

0.1. COPYRIGHT NOTICE

0.1

All materials in this document are copyrighted. The author reserves all rights. Infringements will be prosecuted at the maximum extent allowed by law. You are permitted to do the following: 1. add a link to the source of this document at www.mobots.com 2. view the materials online at www.mobots.com. 3. make copies (electronic or paper) for personal use only, given that: (a) copies are not distributed by any means, you can always refer someone else to the source (b) copyright notice and author information be preserved, you cannot cut and paste portions of this document without also copying the copyright notice

CONTENTS

Part I

Before Getting Started

Chapter 1

Who is likely to succeed?

The Micromouse design project is not suitable for everyone. From past experience, there are certain types of students who are more likely to succeed in a Micromouse project. This is, however, not to say students who are not of such types will not succeed.

1.1

Drive to make it work

The most important factor is the drive an individual to get something to work. This factor has been demonstrated, again and again, to be more important than intelligence and experience. Note that there are dierent forces that drive students, and the drive to make something work is dierent from other drives. For example, the drive to get a good grade or succeed do not necessarily translate to success in this type of project. Without a drive to make something work, a student is likely to get frustrated, procrestinate, give up or just leach on other team members as soon as any diculty is encountered. I can guarantee that there will be many obstacles to get a Micromouse to work. Do you have a drive to make a project work? You can ask yourself the following questions:

1.2

Possession of an inquisitive Mind

Curiosity may kill a cat, but it is an important factor to get a Micromouse design to work. Although there are traditional designs that a team can follow, there will still be mysterious problems developed sooner or later. An inquisitive mind not only considers such problems as challenging puzzles to solve, but is also usually equipped with the necessary analytical and logical skills to tackle problems.

1.3

Ability to stay cool when things seem hopeless

From time to time, especially nearing Picnic Day, things may seem hopeless. You can avoid hopeless situations by not procrastinating. Nonetheless, bad things happen. A robot may be dropped and it may break into pieces. A new enhancement turns out to break a lot of existing code. An upgrade of the compiler no longer compiles your program. Although you can avoid most of these situations by being careful and preparing for the worst, you can still, though rarely, get into hopeless situations. 13

CHAPTER 1. WHO IS LIKELY TO SUCCEED?

For micromouse projects, it is important not to panic and stay cool. Panicing is not going to help anything, so you might as well try to remain calm and approach the problem methodologically. There will be pressure, but you need to focus on the work, and not the pressure.

1.4

Self Discipline

Because of the long span of time of a micromouse project, it is rather critical that as a collective, that a team has enough self discipline to work on the project as much as possible and as early as possible. The amount of work doesnt change. If you push the work to a later time, you simply end up with less time to do it. It is much better to get started early and work on the project diligently from the start. This way, you may end up getting everything done weeks ahead of schedule. Guess what, now you can relax and enjoy your Spring Break while all the other groups try to rush their projects. Trust me, Having the option to sit back and relax knowing that you will have a good grade is a good feeling.

Chapter 2

Timeline
This chapter deals with the timeline of your project. I act more or less like a project manager in this class. I can remind you that you should be at a certain stage of the project, or that you should have reached a milestone. However, I do not crack the whip to make you meet the target timeline milestones. It is your grade that is on the line here, not mine.

2.1

Backward Timeline

Lets think about the project timeline from the target date of completion: Picnic Day. Then we work our way back to gure out at which point of time you should have what completed. approx. date Picnic Day (about two weeks into the Spring quarter) done by then This is show time! Your mouse has to solve the maze on Picnic Day according to IEEE region 6 rules to get an A in this class. You should have a fully functional micromouse with spare batteries, spare wheels and spare tires. You have two weeks to Picnic Day. At this time, motion control sensor logic, exploration logic and the oodll algorithm should be fully operational. You may need to tweak the software for better performance or improved reliability (so the mouse doesnt crash all by itself). what to work on next Work on the nal report next. Your grade is still pending on a satisfactory nal report for the project.

End of Spring Break

Work on incremental improvements from now to Picnic Day. Be sure to use version control so you can revert to a working version when a modication doesnt work (as well as you expect). Ideas you can explore include integrated turns, optimized speed runs and improved path-planning algorithms (using the oodll result as a basis).

16 approx. date Beginning of Spring Break done by then You have one week of Spring Break. There isnt much time left. At this point, you should have fully functional electronics, mechanical components and software components. The robot should be able to follow walls, explore/map the maze and solve the maze slowly (using the stop-forevery-cell approach). You should have individual components working by now. The robot should be able to go straight without maze sensor feedback. The robot should be able to follow walls on either side. The robot should be able to map walls as it travels. The oodll algorithm should work in simulation. The exploration algorithm should work in simulation. You should have a chassis with motors and batteries mounted. The controller should be functional with preliminary control software to spin the wheels. Sensors, as components, should be specied. All interface circuits (for sensors, motors and etc.) should be specied and designed.

CHAPTER 2. TIMELINE what to work on next Try to improve the performance by overlapping oodll computation with motion so the robot does not need to stop for every cell, even during the exploration phase.

Mid Winter Quarter

Work on integration for the second half of Winter Quarter. In other words, make the exploration software communicate with the low level software to drive the robot. Integrate wall mapping logic into the motion control logic.

Beginning of Winter Quarter

Beginning of Winter Break

You should have motors, wheels and gearboxes specied. You should also have batteries specied. The controller board should be specied so its size is known. The basic design of chassis should be available at this point. The oodll and exploration algorithm should be understood by now. Basic motion control theories should be understood by now.

Implement and experiment with the sensors interface circuits. Redesign and modify as necessary. You may need to change or redesign the chassis. Construct sensor banks xtures. Write lowlevel software to read sensors. Write motion control software for the motors. Write oodll and exploration software with simulation. Implement the rst chassis based on the chassis design. Acquire mechanical parts, batteries and controller board. Begin to narrow down sensor choices (by small quantity orders and experiments).

2.1. BACKWARD TIMELINE approx. date Mid Fall Quarter done by then You should have the overall design requirements available. Tasks should be assign to group members. The preliminary budget should be determined. The overall schedule of each group member all the way through Spring semester should be made available (for scheduling purposes). what to work on next Start to research drive components (motors, gearboxes, wheels and etc.) and the corresponding batteries. Research available and suitable controllers and software development tools. Study the oodll and exploration algorithms. Write basic map storing and retrieval code. Write maze simulator. Study basic motion control logic. Research and acquire necessary tools. Form groups. Determine strategy and design philosophy. Research existing literature (mostly from the web) for mechanical design. Get familiarized with basic physics (force, mass, speed, acceleration, energy, power, etc.). Get familiarized with circuits like Hbridges, constant current control and etc. Study, study, study!

Beginning Fall Quarter

N/A

CHAPTER 2. TIMELINE

Part II

Robot Components

Chapter 3

Drive System
Needless to say, the drive system is important to a mobile robot. Afterall, a robot is mobile because it has a drive system! A drive system consists of many components. The following is a logical list of such components, starting with the one that contacts ground:

tire wheel axle, bearing gear (optional) motor motor drive circuit motor and motion control software
Before we explain each component, this chapter rst explains some of the physical laws in driving a robot. Then, each component is discussed.

3.1

The Physics

How fast do you want the robot to go? How quickly do you want your robot to accelerate to its top speed? How much torque do you need? Let us make our lives easy and assume linear acceleration. In physics, v(t) = v0 + a t, in which v(t) is the velocity at time t, v0 is the initial velocity in units of meters per second and a is acceleration in units of meters per second squared. The amount of force to accelerate your robot is F = m a, in which F is force in units of Newton (N) and m is mass in units of gram (g). For example, if your robot has a mass of 1kg, you want the top speed to be 0.2ms1 , and you want it 1 accelerate to top speed in 0.5s, the required force is F = 1kg 0.2ms = 0.4ms2 = 0.4N. How much is 0.5s a Newton (N)? A pound is the force of a 0.4545kg at one G. One G is 9.8ms2 . Therefore, a pound is approximately 4.45N. In other words, 1N is about 0.22 pounds. Thats not much. How can a robots wheels exert 0.4N? Assuming the robot is driven by two drive wheels, each wheel only needs to push at 0.2N at the axle. Intuitively, the large the wheel, the more torque it needs to 21

CHAPTER 3. DRIVE SYSTEM

deliver the same amount of force at the axle. Torque is = F l. If we use a wheel has a radius of 30mm, the required torque becomes = 0.2N 0.03m = 0.006Nm. Most stepper motors are specied by its detent and holding torque. The holding torque is easy to explain: this is the amount of torque to force the axle to turn one step when the motor is energized. The detent torque is the amount of torque that a motor has to turn the axle. This is what we need to know. Most stepper motors have both the holding torque and detent torque specied. Surplus motors, however, seldom has any specications. You will need to purchase one and nd out by testing. In the case that torque is specied, it is often specied in oz-in (ounce-inch). How does an ounce-inch 1 relate to newton-meter? 1ozin = 16 lb0.0254m. 1 pound is 4.45N, so 1 oz-in is 4.45 N0.0254m, which 16 computes to 0.00706Nm. In our example, we need 0.006Nm, which translates to less than 1 oz-in. Some other times, torque is very incorrectly specied in g-cm (gram centimeter). The unit should have been g-G-cm (gram at one G centimeter). How does one 1 g-G-cm relate to N-m? It is 0.001kg9.8ms2 0.01m, which computes to 9.8 105 Nm. An oz-in is, therefore, 72.04 g-G-cm. Note that our computation does not include any friction and angular momentum of the wheels. Furthermore, it assumes that the torque remains the same from stationary to full speed. In reality, a design needs a lot of margins. In this case, it is not unreasonable at all to specify stepper motors with at least 3 to 4 oz-in of torque.

3.2

Error Consideration

The drive system is prone to errors. Even if you use stepper motors, errors can still be introduced due to an imperfect maze oor (bumps and dust). Furthermore, the competition rules specify that the maze may be constructed with up to 5% of tolerance. How much error is too much error? It all depends on the limits at which errors can still be corrected and your tolerance of risks. We will discuss errors and error correction in depth later. For now, having a linear resolution of 1mm to 2mm is a reasonable assumption.

3.3

Tire

For robots that travel on at and nished surface, the best type of tires to use is the at type. Very often, rubber bands used to hold bunches of brocolli work exceptionally well. You can also try painted on anti-slip elastic material for inexpensive tires. O-rings work, too, but they are not at and hence do not provide as much friction as at surfaces. Inner tubes of mountain bike tires also make excellent tires. If you have a holey tire around waiting to be dumped, cut it up into small sections about the size of the wheel. Compared to rubber bands, the rubber used in inner tires is considerably more durable. If you insist to buy professional tires, I suggest the type used for model airplane landing gears. These are generally thinner so your robot does not become too wide.

3.4

Wheel

You can easily make wheels from a bench drill and a hole cutter. Simply select a piece of wood of the right thickness (1/4 to 3/8), then use a 2 to 2.25 hole saw to cut out a piece. It is important to use a bench drill if possible to make sure the cut edge is perpendicular to the surface. Note that the same trick works on plastic as well. You need to select a hole saw with ne teeth to work on plastic. Once you have a piece of circular material, you need to cut a groove so the tire does not slip out. If you have access to a lathe, great! Otherwise, you will need to construct a tool to do this.

3.5. BALL TRANSFER

Measure the diameter of the hole of the wheel. This should be the same as that of the drill bit on the hole saw. Go to a hardware store and nd a bolt, washers and a matching nut. With washers on both sides of the wheel, insert the bolt and use the nut to tighten everything up. Now insert the other end of the bolt into the drill press and tighten up the chuck. Now you have a simple lathe. Turn on the drill press and use a tool to cut the groove. A sharp chisel that is narrower than the groove works. Of course, if you want to save yourself all this trouble (and fun!), you can use plastic or aluminum wheels for model airplanes.

3.5

Ball Transfer

If you have a dierentially steered robot, it is useful to use a ball transfer as the third support point. A ball transfer is basically a ball that can rotate in any direction at any time. This is better than a wheel that swivels, especially for in-place turns. A wheel that swivels will skid and introduce errors. You can purchase ball transfers from industrial places that make/sell ball transfers for transfer table applications. Such ball transfers are made from steel and can be quite large and heavy. They work well with a heavy robot, but lighter robots cannot even exert enough force to get the ball to rotate. Another option is to buy some inexpensive plastic balls (from a local plastic supplier, such as TAPS in Sacramento, CA), and somehow hold the ball in with plastic material. One student of mine was very creative and purchased a pair of measuring spoons with half-sphere scoops that match the size of the plastic ball. In this case, make a hole to expose the plastic ball, use rubber band to hold the two spoons together and you have an inexpensive and light ball transfer!

3.6

Bearing, shaft, etc.

Without knowing your exact design, it is dicult to discuss bearing and shaft. However, there are generally two approaches to attach the wheel to the chassis. The rst approach involves a stationary shaft. This works well for slowly rotating wheels. This approach is easier to implement because the shaft can be a bolt xed on the chassis by nuts and washers. The second approach involves a rotating shaft that is mounted onto the chassis via sleeves or ball bearing. This approach is more common with faster rotating wheels. It is more dicult to implement.

3.7

Gearing

Unless you are using a motor with a gear head or a very strong and high resolution stepper motor, you probably need to gear the motor down to get the right speed and torque. Gearing beyond 5:1 requires multiple gears. Although this can be done, it is generally dicult to be done right. As a result, you should select the motor properly so that you do not need to gear it down too much. For a low gearing ratio, you can pretty much use any type of gear. Plastic gears tend to have less grinding and are generally less expensive. One option is not to use gears at all. Instead, have the drive axle of the motor directly driving the wheel via friction. See the following gure. In order for this approach to work, you need the tire to have good grip, and you need some force pushing the motor axle against the wheel.

CHAPTER 3. DRIVE SYSTEM

Figure 3.1: Direction Friction Drive

3.8

Motors

For smaller robots such as Micromice, there are mostly two types of motors: stepper motors and DC motors. This section explains how these two types of motors work and compare them.

3.8.1

Types of Stepper Motors

A general schematic of stepper motors is shown in gure 3.2.

A D

Y C

Figure 3.2: Stepper Motor Schematic In this picture, the light blue magnet rotates at the center of the four coils. A, B, C, D, X and Y are electrical nodes that are connected to wires. There are dierent classes of stepper motors, depending on the conguration of point X and point Y in the gure.

X and Y are both available and independent: most unipolar stepper motors are like this. This is the X and Y are available but they are connected as one node: less common unipolar stepper motors X and Y are not available: this is the conguration for motors designed for bipolar drive.

most general conguration as you can use bipolar or unipolar drive, with or without half stepping. are like this. This is much less general than the previous one. You can still use bipolar drive, but you cannot half step when the motor is bipolarly driven.

By switching current through the coils, the freely rotating magnet follows the changing magnetic eld and rotates. The magnet is connected to the drive axle of a stepper motor to deliver torque. In unipolar full-step drive, only one coil is active an any time. In order to turn the magnet clockwise, the following current sequence can be repeated:

2. BY 3. CX

1. A X

3.8. MOTORS 4. D Y

The beauty of unipolar drive is that the direction of current through the coils do not change. A controller merely needs to switch current on and o. Switching is easy when current direction does not change. In bipolar full-step drive, points X and Y are not used. Instead, two coils in series are used at the same time. The current sequence to turn the magnet clockwise is as follows.

2. BD 3. BA 4. DB

1. A B In this case, the controller needs to switch on and o as well as the direction of current. We will explain how to do this later. Why would anyone want to switch current direction when there is an easier solution (from the perspective of circuit design)? It turns out bipolar drive ideally saves 50% energy while delivering the same amount of work. The strength of magnetic eld is proportional to both the current and the number of winding of a coil. Let us use the following assumptions: 1. the resistance of each of the four coils is 30

2. the number of winding of each of the four coils is 50 3. the supply voltage is 12V
12 In unipolar drive, the current is 30 = 0.4A, and there is a total of 50 winding for the active coil. In 12 bipolar drive, the current is 30+30 = 0.2A, and there is a total of 50+50=100 winding. You can see that in bipolar drive, even though the current is dropped by 50% compared to unipolar drive, the number of winding is increased by 100%. The developed magnetic eld is equally strong in both cases. 12 From the perspective of power consumption, unipolar drive consumes 12 30 = 4.8W, whereas bipolar 12 drive consumes 12 30+30 = 2.4W. Hey, bipolar drive saves 50% energy!

3.8.2

How to Choose a Stepper Motor?

Stepper motors come in all sizes and resolutions. Even though our conceptual schematic of a stepper motor performs a full rotation in four steps, most steppers motors have higher resolution. Some stepper motors rotate 7.5 per step, others rotate as little as 0.9 per step. Some stepper motors are strong enough to control X-Y tables, others only need to move the head of a CD-player. In general, stepper motors of smaller sizes (1 inch diameter and about 0.75 inch thickness) have larger step sizes and less torque, while larger ones (1.5 inch cubed or so) have ner step sizes and more torque. While it is not an absolute guideline, motors that consume about 1W to 3W are about right in terms of torque and power. The decision between a larger, ne step and high torque motor and a smaller, large step and low torque one is up to you. A smaller and lighter motor makes the overall size smaller and the overall mass lighter. However, due to the lack of torque and resolution, you need to gear down the drive axle of a smaller motor. A larger, high resolution and high torque stepper motor can be directly attached to a drive wheel. This approach simplies the mechanical design, but it adds more mass and increases the overall size. Most other school use these high torque and high resolution stepper motors. The bottom line can be summarized as follows:

CHAPTER 3. DRIVE SYSTEM

Do you have enough linear resolution? Do you have enough torque for acceleration and deceleration? Is it realistic to carry enough batteries to last 15 minutes?

Chapter 4

Energy System
4.1 Chemistries

If you go to an electronic store, there are plenty of batteries to choose from. The following is a table describing the dierent types of batteries and their characteristics.

4.2

Voltage Regulation

Two main components of a robot requires electrical power: the motors and the brain. Although motors are rated at certain voltages, such recommendations are often lose. This means using 13.2V on a stepper motor rated for 12V is unlikely to be any problem. The brain (logic) component, however, is not as exible. If a logic component is rated at 5V, you cannot feed it 6V or 4V.

4.2.1

Logic Voltage Regulators

There are two popular voltage regulation approaches: linear voltage regulation and switching voltage regulation. Linear regulators are inexpensive and easy to set up. However, the eciency of linear regulators is a function of the input voltage. For example, if the input voltage is 12V and the output 5 voltage is 5V, the eciency is only 12 . On the other hand, if the input voltage is 5.5V and the output 5 voltage is 5V, the eciency becomes 5.5 . One common problem with linear regulators in the case of high input voltage is that the regulator itself has to dissipate a lot of power and gets hot. There is really no easy way to overcome this problem. One solution is to use switching regulators instead. Another solution is to use one battery for logic and another battery for motor.

4.2.2

Stepper Booster

In the case of stepper motors, it is possible to enhance the energy delivery to the motors so that a battery of a lower voltage can be used. The basic principle is the same as a boost switching regulator. However, because a motor does not require an exact voltage, much of the feedback and control of a boost regulator can be omitted. Furthermore, the boost circuit can deliver more power when a step just occur, then taper o as time progresses to save energy. See the following schematic for this circuit. This circuit uses L1 to store energy when T1 is turned on. When T1 is abruptly shut o, the positive node of C1 experiences as much potential as necessary to keep the current going as the magnetic eld of L1 collapses. The output of this circuit connects to a coil of a stepper motor. Because the instantaneous current to a coil (another inductor) is zero, we need C1 to buer the energy released by L1. 27

CHAPTER 4. ENERGY SYSTEM

VDD
1 L1 2

BAT400 GND

T1 BSS101

4.3. ENERGY CALCULATION

Note that this circuit assumes all electrical charge of the capacitor will be discharged through the stepper motor coil before T1 is enabled. If this cannot be assumed, then a diode should be placed between the drain of T1 and the anode of C1, with the anode of the diode connected to the drain of T1. By modulating the duty cycle as well as frequency of switching T1, the power delivered to the stepper motor can be software controlled. Note that an H-bridge is still needed for a bipolar driven stepper motor.

4.3

Energy Calculation

How big of a battery do you need? There are a few factors that determine the minimum size of battery that you will need. Motors on a Micromouse consumes most of the power. For most micromice, each stepper typically consumes 1.5W to 3W on the average. For dierential steering, two stepper motors consume up to 6W. By comparison, the logic components typically draw a total of about 80mA. Even at a supply voltage of 12V, the logic component only consumes 1W. If we assume the whole robot consume 7W, it requires 6300J of energy to last 15 minutes. If we use a 12V battery, it must have a capacity of 6300J/12V=525Asec or 145.8mAH. This may imply that getting a battery of 150mAH is sucient. Unfortunately, the discharge curve of a 150mAH will not sustain the required voltage for 15 minutes. It is not an overkill to double or triple the capacity estimate. In addition to just making sure there is enough energy to last 15 minutes, a battery of high capacity can also deliver power better due to a lower internal resistance. Most NiMH or NiCd batteries are specied to discharge healthily at 1C. This means a battery with a capacitor of 150mAH can healthily discharge at 150mA. You must take this into consideration when choosing the capacity of your battery. In our current example, it is actually very reasonable to use a battery with a capacity of 500mAH (at 12V).

4.4

Charging and Discharging

Care should be taken when charging and discharging batteries to maintain safety as well as longevity of the batteries. Read the specications of batteries to understand how they are supposed to be used. As general rules, NiCd batteries can be trickle charged at C/30. C is the capacity specied in AH (amp-hour). This means a battery of 3AH capacity can be trickle charged at 100mA. A completely drained battery should be charged at C/30 for 40 to 45 hours before they are fully charged. There is no harm in trickle charging beyond 45 hours. Some batteries, both NiCd and NiMH, are designed for rapid charging. Most newer NiMH batteries can be charged at 1C. This means a battery rated at 3AH can be charged at 3A. In rapid charging, charge duration should be used only as a safety measure. When charged at 1C, a timer circuit should turn o the charger in 1.2 hours. In addition to the charge period, one can also use the battery voltage as a hint as to when a battery is fully charged. Each cell peaks at about 1.55V and then drops to a lower voltage as it is being charged. When a NiCd or NiMH battery is discharged, be sure not to overdischarge. When a cell in a battery is 1.1V or less (at average drain rate), the battery should be considered drained.

CHAPTER 4. ENERGY SYSTEM

Chemistry Alkaline

Strength Alkaline batteries are popular for small electronic devices and toys. These batteries have a high energy density and they are usually quite inexpensive when you guy store brands.

NiCd

NiMH

Li-ion

Nickel Cadium batteries represent the majority of rechargeable batteries. The internal resistance of NiCd batteries is small, making these batteries dangerously ecient at fast discharging. NiCd batteries can be trickle charged, which means a recharger can be inexpensively made. Being rechargeable, NiCd batteries are economical in the long run. Nickel Metal Hydride batteries share many advantages with NiCd batteries. In addition, NiMH batteries have twice the energy-density of NiCd batteries. For the same size and same mass, a NiMH battery stores twice the amount of energy. NiMH batteries also have low internal resistance and are rechargeable. NiMH batteries do not have memory effect, which means they do not need to be empty before being recharged. Lithium-ion batteries are used in many high-end cordless and rechargeable devices. The energy-density of Lithiumion batteries is higher than that of NiMH batteries.

Weakness Alkaline batteries have high internal resistance. This means even though they have a high energy-density, it is not possible to release energy at a fast rate. Furthermore, alkaline batteries discharge at a linear slope. This means the output voltage continues to drop linearly as the battery discharges. This characteristics aect the torque or motors severely. Most alkaline batteries are not designed to be rechargeable, making the long-run rather expensive. NiCd batteries have memory eect. This means when a battery is recharged without rst completely discharged, the capacity of the battery will be limited. Furthermore, NiCd batteries have a relatively low energy-density. This means it takes more mass to store the same aount of energy compared to high energydensity batteries. Unlike NiCd batteries, NiMH batteries cannot be trickle charged. This is a minor issue because it is still easy to correctly charge NiMH batteries with a constant current source and a voltage monitor.

Although Li-ion batteries seem very suitable for robotics, they have some limitations. Li-ion batteries are not designed for continuous high drain rate. This is why cordless power tools do not use Liion batteries. It is also quite dicult to charge Li-ion batteries with home made circuits. Li-ion batteries require constant current charging for the rst stage, then constant voltage should take over for the second stage.

Table 4.1: Battery Chemistry Comparison

Chapter 5

Chassis
The drive system and battery are the most bulky components of a robot. Once these two components are tested and determined, a chassis should be designed and produced.

5.1

Materials

There are many useable materials for a Micromouse chassis. When you are considering what material to use, you need to keep several factors in mind. First of all, is this material strong enough? A Micromouse can collide with a wall under its own propulsion. You can assume a wall in a maze is solid. The next question is how fast is your robot traveling when it collides with a wall. In addition, you need to make sure the material you use is not excessively exible because exible materials promote vibration. Secondly, is this material easy to work with? Although the Micromouse class has traditionally arranged with the Mechanical Engineering Departments machine shop, the general consensus is that it is quite dicult even to attend the mandatory orientation classes. It is better if you can work on the chassis at your own time and at a place that you choose. Last but not least, is this material easy to acquire? Be warned that you may need to make several chasses before you are satised with one. Expensive or dicult-to-get material makes it dicult to prototype and rene the chassis.

5.1.1

Metal

A chassis made from sheet metal or machined metal is generally very strong. In fact, it is usually much stronger than necessary. Steel and aluminum are both very popular choices. A metalic chassis often require quite specialized tools. Unless you have access to a milling machine otherwise, you will need access to the machine shop. If the chassis is not milled from a solid block of metal, you also need methods to assemble the various pieces.

5.1.2

Plastic

Plastic (acrylic) is gaining popularity in Micromouse design at U.C. Davis in the past few years. Although acrylic plastic is not as strong as sheet metal, it is strong enough for slower (that is, most) Micromice. The key to strength in a chassis made from sheet plastic is how the pieces are assembled. Plastic is easy to work with. Most stores selling sheet plastic (such as Taps Plastic) also optionally cut sheets into specied dimensions. With a ne-tooth bandsaw, saw table or circular saw, you can also cut sheet plastic easily. You can also score and then break sheet plastic into predetermined sizes. Drilling plastic does require a little practice because plastic (especially acrylic) is brittle. 31

CHAPTER 5. CHASSIS

To put pieces of a plastic chassis together, you can use glue. You can use special cement for glueing acrylic, epoxy or even hot glue. For pieces with very clean cut edges, acrylic cement works best and looks best. For unevenly cut edges, epoxy and hot glue work better because they ll in the gaps. One strange problem with plastic chasses is that the chasses tend to be too light. Yes, people need to add extra weight just to make sure the robot does not topple (to the front)!

5.1.3

Wood

Although wood may seem very old-fashioned and clumsy, it has characteristics that make it suitable for small robots such as Micromice. First of all, wood has a natural self-dampening property. This is quite useful for designs with long sensor arms because bouncing and the consequent vibration can interfere with reective sensor readings. Wood is also easy to work with. For a Micromouse sized robot, even cutting and chiseling a chassis from a solid block is not infeasible! It is easy to assemble a wooden chassis from pieces because you can use glue or screws to hold various parts together. Micromice utilizing ultrasound sensors should consider using wood for the chassis because of the dampening property. Otherwise, the ultrasound transducer will vibrate the entire metalic/plastic chassis and the sensor will only hear this self-induced vibration. As for availability, you can nd wood practically everywhere. I suggest the use of pressed and treated wood panels/blocks because of the increased density and strength.

5.2

Physics

Besides the size and shape of the components, another factor that determines the design of a chassis is physics. The following are almost always desireable:

small overall size: this means less chance of getting caught and colliding with objects. smaller moment of inertia: two designs can have the same overall mass but one has a signicantly lower center of mass: two designs can have the same overall mass, but one has a lower center of wheel size and placement: wheel size and placement can signicantly
mass. A lower center of mass means more stability and less tendency to topple or roll-over. smaller moment of inertia. A smaller moment of inertia means the robot can turn quicker and more accurately.

Chapter 6

Controller
A controller is also called an embedded controller, a microcontroller, an embedded computer, or a singleboard computer. Regardless of the name, a controller (in this context) is simply a computer that satises the following requirements:

has a processor that can execute programs has non-volatile memory to store programs has RAM to store data, RAM needs not be non-volatile has I/O peripherals to connect to robot related components and circuits the size is compatible with the robot being designed the power consumption is compatible with the robot being designed
This chapter discusses the selection of a controller for a robot.

6.1

Processing Requirements

Processing requirements are typically divided into processing power (measured in MIPS), program size (in kB) and data size (in kB). It is not always the case that all requirements increase at the same time. There are applications, for example, that requires a lot of processing power, but relatively little program size and data size. For Micromouse applications, the requirements depend on the type of approach. A Micromouse using the oodll algorithm and coded carefully to conserve data memory typically is about 20kB in program size and requires about 2kB of data. About 12MIPS (8-bit instructions) is more than sucient. That is not very much! On the other hand, if more advanced optimization algorithms are used (such as Dijkstras algorithm, C* or A*), much more processing power is needed. A* also has a high demand on data memory.

6.1.1

Processing Power

Processing power is typicaly measured in MIPS (million instructions per second) given the width of the ALU. The AVR Atmega128, for example, averages about 12MIPS with an 8-bit ALU. How much processing power do you need? Thats not an easy question to answer. One way to nd out is to write the most processing intensive code rst and run it in a simulator. You can, then, time the execution time and use that as a basis. The oodll algorithm written in C completes in 20ms using the Atmega128 running at 16MHz. This is, indeed, fast enough for most practical purposes. 33

CHAPTER 6. CONTROLLER

Dont forget that ISRs (interrupt service routines) also demand processing resources. If you use a high resolution encoder on a fast wheel, just the decoding logic may consume most of the available processing power. Because an ISR is typically not very complex, you can use a simulator to benchmark how much time it takes (on the average) for each invocation, then multiply that by the interrupt frequency to nd out how much time the processor needs to process ISRs per second.

6.1.2

Program Size

Most controllers store programs in ash memory. Flash memory is relatively inexpensive, so a controller usually has enough program memory anyway. A typical Micromouse program using the oodll algorithm only requires about 20kB of memory. The Atmel Atmega128 MCU provides 128kB of program memory, much more than sucient. Note that some controllers require programs be loaded into RAM before execution. Some others execute programs much faster once loaded into RAM. This is because most ash memory chips are slower to access compared to SRAM. In these cases, just having enough ash program space is not suient, you also need to make sure the program ts in SRAM along with data.

6.1.3

Data Size

Data size depends a lot on the application and algorithm. For a Micromouse using the oodll algorithm, only about 2kB is required to store data. However, other algorithms can potentially require a lot more. Data requirement is typically divided into three main categories. the rst category are static variables. These variables (including arrays and large structures) are global and they occupy a static portion of RAM. The next category is the stack. Stack memory requirement depends mostly on the level of function call nesting and the use of large local variables. Recursive algorithms typically have somewhat unpredictable stack requirements, therefore they should be avoided. (All recursive algorithms can be translated to iterative ones.) The last category is the heap for dynamic memory allocation. While it is common for desktop applicatoin and system programs to rely on dynamically allocated memory, it is not a good idea with embedded applications. This is mostly because the memory requirement cannot be determined (in most cases). As mentioned before, some controllers either require or prefer to load program into SRAM before execution. This means the total SRAM requirement depends on the data size as well as program size.

6.2

Size

The physical size of a controller can play an important role in smaller robots. For example, MiniSumo robots must t in 10cm by 10cm, which makes the use of physically large controllers impossible. Micromouse robots do not have as much of a size limitation. Note that a larger controller PCB means it exes more readily and it weighs more. Both are not advantages. When given the choice, it is always better to choose a smaller controller.

6.3

Power Consumption

Power consumption depends on the processor as well as peripherals. With the Atmega128, power consumption is typically less than 30mA at 5V when the processor is running at 16MHz and all I/O devices are enabled. However, an AMD 188 running at 40MHz (with external ash and SRAM) easily requires more than 200mA at 5V. Power consumption is important for two main reasons. First, a higher power consumption means more battery energy is required. Most robots require far more energy for the drive subsystem anyway. Second, a higher power consumption means the use of linear regulators may not be practical. This is

6.4. I/O

because the power dissipation of a linear regulator is proportional to the voltage drop at the regulator and the current. Dropping from 12V to 5V and having a consumption of 200mA means a power dissipation of 1.4W, which requires heat sinking even with a TO-220 package.

6.4 6.5 6.6

I/O Development Tools Support and Repair

CHAPTER 6. CONTROLLER

Part III

Common Robotics Theories

Chapter 7

Dierential Steering
Dierential steering is also called skid steering. This type of steering is used on tanks and other vehicles with treads. Wheelchairs are also steered by dierential steering. When a vehicle uses dierential steering, it commands two wheels on opposing sides to turn at dierent speeds. For example, if the right wheel is faster than the left wheel, the vehicle steers to the left. In this section, well examine some of the motion control functions that can be accomplished with dierential steering.

7.1

Displacements

A dierentially steered vehicle has two displacements. One is linear, and the other one is angular. The linear displacement controls how far the vehicle goes, while the angular displacement controls how much the vehicle turns. In this text, well use DL for the linear displacement and DA for the angular displacement. DL is the total number of steps that both motors need to perform. This is not dicult to understand. DA , on the other hand, is a little more complicated. DA is the total dierence of steps between the two motors. In other words, if forward is positive for both wheels, DA is the dierence between the displacement of the right wheel and the displacement of the left wheel. To keep track of DL , every time either the right or the left wheel has a step forward, we add one to a counter. If a wheel has a step backward, we subtract one from the counter. To keep track of DA , we assign positive to forward for one motor (well use left-forward), and assign negative to forward for the other motor. This means for each step the left wheel goes forward, it adds one to the counter. For each step the right wheel goes forward, it subtracts one from the counter.

7.2

Velocity

Just as there are two displacements, there are also two velocities. The linear velocity is vL , whereas the angular velocity is vA . For stepper motor designs, it is important to derive the velocity of each wheel. This is quite simple. The left motor velocity, using our convention (that left-forward is positive for angular), is vL + vA . This means the velocity of the right wheel is vL vA .

7.3

Acceleration

You probably know by now that there are two accelerations, aL and aA . Note that for a robot, the maximum aL is probably dierent from the maximum aA . This is because the mass of a robot with 39

CHAPTER 7. DIFFERENTIAL STEERING

respect to linear force available is often dierent from the angular momentum of a robot with respect to turning torque. As a quick example, increasing the length between the two wheels increases turning torque without changing forward force. Once again, the acceleration for the left motor is aL + aA , whereas the acceleration for the right motor is aL aA .

Chapter 8

Stepper Motor Control

One advantage of stepper motor based designs is that open loop control may be used. It is not uncommon that stepper based designs assume linear acceleration and deceleration. This simplies the control logic signicantly.

8.1

Displacement

Displacement (remaining distance to travel or remaining angle to turn) determines acceleration and velocity. Assuming the design has a maximum aL and maximum aA , we want to make use of such quantities whenever it is possible. One great thing about using a stepper motor is that the speed prole can be precisely controled. This translates to precise displacement control. Assuming a linear acceleration and deceleration prole, the displacement is the area of the trapezoid bound by the speed prole in a speed versus time plot. Let us assume the acceleration is aacc and the deceleration is merely aacc . Let us also assume we have a displacement D to cover. The rst thing we need to determine is whether we need to accelerate to full speed or not. Let us assume the full speed is vmax . If the robot is to start from stationary and has to stop at D displacement, then the speed prole is either a triangle or a trapezoid. max The time needed to accelerate to full speed is t = vmax . The displacement is then D = tv2 , which aacc can be simplied to D =
2 vmax 2aacc .

Assuming a symmetric deceleration, then D =

2 vmax aacc .

If the desired displacement is greater than amax , then the prole needs a constant speed portion. acc Otherwise, if the displacement is smaller, then we may not need even the maximum speed. If D < amax , then we can determine a top speed such at vtop = aD . acc acc In reality, however, we seldom need to predetermine the top speed. This is because the displacement can be adjusted so that the top speed needs to be recomputed anyway. If D is the remaining displacement to travel, we can use the following logic:
v if D > 2aacc then if v < vmax then if a < aacc then set a = aacc end if else set a = 0 end if else
2

42 if a > aacc then set a = aacc end if end if

CHAPTER 8. STEPPER MOTOR CONTROL

8.2

Steering

Given DL as the linear distance to travel and Da as the angular displacement to travel, we can apply the previous algorithm independently to determine the acceleration. With the independent accelerations, vL and va can be computed. We then combine vL and va to compute the actual velocity for the right motor and the left motor. In other words, each motor does not really have its own acceleration. Note that for the angular displacement, we also need to take the sign into consideration. The modied code to handle signed quantities is as follows:
v set r = sign(v) 2amax if sign(r) = sign(d) then if sign(d) v < vmax then set a = amax sign(d) else set a = 0 end if else if sign(v) r sign(v) d then set a = sign(v) amax else if sign(d) v < vmax then set a = amax sign(d) else set a = 0 end if end if end if ca = ca + a if ca fbase then ca = ca fbase v = v + sign(a) else if ca fbase then ca = ca + fbase v = v + sign(a) end if The previous code should be replicated so we end up with one for linear distance and one for angular distance. Then we combine the two and control the stepper motors. The following is the code for the left motor. Code for the right motor is almost the same, except the change vl + va to vl va . cml = cml + vl + va if cml fbase then set cml = cml fbase one step forward else if cml fbase then set cml = cml + fbase one step backward
2

8.3. EFFICIENT IMPLEMENTATION end if

8.3

Ecient Implementation

If you try to implement the program following the pseudocode, you will end up with a program that works, but not necessarily eciently. It is easy to determine whether two numbers have the same sign. The hint is to use the MSB (most signicant bit) as the sign bit, then use bit-wise operations to help you determine whether two numbers have the same sign bit. Multiplying a number by a sign is an expensive method to change the sign of a number. For example, recall the following code: if sign(d) v < vmax then set a = amax sign(d) else set a = 0 end if This code can be implemented by if d < 0 and v > vmax then set a = amax else if d 0 and v < vmax then set a = amax else set a = 0 end if The new implementation is a little less general and therefore longer. However, there is no multiplication involved. Negating constants such as vmax and amax is easy and is done at compile time. Determining whether a number is negative or not is also easy in hardware (sign bit).

8.4

Measuring units

Measuring in units of steps is intuitive, but this is not the most eective method. When distance (displacement) is measured in steps, it is impossible to move with high precision. This is because the length of one cell is unlikely to be a whole number of steps. As a result, it is better to represent distance as a fraction of a step. For example, let us assume a step is 2mm linearly. If we represent distance as a sixteenth of a step, then each unit is 1 mm. When a step 8 is performed, the remaining displacement is decreased by 16. Using this measuring unit, however, the length of a cell is no longer in whole units of 2mm. Instead, the length of a cell is measured in 0.125mm. Note that the advantage can only be taken when we track the current location of the mouse in 0.125mm units. As a result, it may be better to change the algorithm so that we use dt dc as the remaining distance, where dt is the target displacement, and dc is the current displacement. This way, to trigger movement, we set dt to the location of the next cell. In other words, dt = n d1 , in which n is an integer, and d1 is the length of one cell measured in 0.125mm. To avoid the stepper logic to oscilate when the remaining displacement is smaller than that of a step, the logic should consider it is on target when |dt dc | < 16.

CHAPTER 8. STEPPER MOTOR CONTROL

Chapter 9

Noise Related Problems and Solutions

Robots are inherently electrically noisy. Although Micromice are small robots, they are still noisy. Fortunately, most micromice designs do not require much analog circuits, which signicantly limit the impact of noise to the designs. Nonetheless, it is still important to know where noise comes from and how to limit it.

9.1
9.1.1

Sources of Electrical Noise

Basic Theories

Resistance of Wires/Traces Because of resistance, there is a voltage drop across any trace or wire. This voltage drop is proportional to the amount of current. When there is a lot of current owing from point A to point B, all the points in between will observe voltage dierences when compared to both point A and point B. Capacitance of Inputs All high impedence inputs have some capacitance. Due to this capacitance, signals cannot change exactly instantly. In addition, due to capacitance, there is more current owing between components as signals are switched. Inductance DC current owing through any inductor has a tendency to maintain itself. Inductance basically determines how quickly current can change. When the resistance along a path with an inductor suddenly increases, inductance makes it impossible for the current to drop as suddenly. As a result, the current drops as a function of many factors, including inductance. Often, current drops slower than the increase of resistance. As a result, a large electrical potential is developed across the points where there is a sharp increase of resistance.

9.1.2

Digital Circuits

Digital circuits can cause noise on the VCC and GND signals. This is because digital circuits switch very fast. As a result, the resistance, capacitance and inductance of a trace/wire become signicant enough to cause observable noise. 45

CHAPTER 9. NOISE RELATED PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

9.1.3

High Current Circuits

High current circuits causes voltage drop due to wire/trace resistance. In addition, fast switching high current circuits also have a lot of electromagnetic feedback due to inductance. This is especially the case for motors because motors are high inductance devices. Even non-inductive high current circuits can cause problems. This is especially the case when the following conditions are met:

The current is switched periodically.

draws a lot of current.

For example, a pulse width modulated heater element that

The current is switched on and o. Again, like a pulse width modulated heater element. The current draw is enough to change the supply voltage.
When all of these conditions are met, the supply will see sharp changes of voltages (like a digital square wave). This is a problem for the voltage regulator because a voltage regulator cannot regulate the output voltage when the input voltage has a sharp change.

9.2
9.2.1

Methods to Reduce Noise

Basic Theories

Isolating the Logic Section If the logic section (including the processor) resets because of a sudden drop of supply voltage when the motors are turned on, consider putting a diode between the supply and the input of the linear regulator. The diode acts as a switch so that if the input capacitor of the linear regulator has a higher voltage than the supply, the capacitor does not get drained to help the motors. You should always take the diode forward voltage drop into consideration. Schottky Barrier diodes typically have a lower forward voltage drop at about 0.5V (100mA current). Take into consideration of the minimum input voltage of the linear regulator and youll know the minimum battery voltage. Instead of only using a .1 F input capacitor, you can consider adding another 2 F capacitor (in parallel) to improve the isolation from the motor voltage. The following gure shows how to use a diode for logic stroke protection.

Reducing Resistance For high current paths, inceasing wire size or trace width will help reduce the resistance. Shortening the length of a trace or wire also helps. In extreme situations, you can add additional jumper wires to create more paths between nodes. Decouping Capacitors The sudden current demand of logic parts switching can be somewhat localized. Placing fast and low impendence capacitors across VCC and GND near logic components help provide some suspension. Typical values for ceramic decoupling capacitors are 0.01 F.

Fly-back Diodes You can use y-back diodes to create an alternate path for current to ow in a fast switching high-current circuit. However, you must use a fast diode that is rated for the amount of instantaneous current. Typical response time of fast diodes is between 4ns and 40ns. Unfortunately, response time is often reversely propertional to the amount of current a diode can handle. For an H-bridge, you need four y-back diodes per H-bridge.

9.2. METHODS TO REDUCE NOISE Zener/Transient Voltage Suppressor Diodes

Fly back diodes are helpful for high inductance devices, but they do not solve all problems. This is mostly because the power supply cables and traces have inductance as well, which makes the resulting EMF global to everything connected to Vin and GND. Zener and TVS diodes become shunts to ground when a voltage higher than the rated stando voltage is presented. Zener diodes are often sucient for clamping excess voltage (mostly due to inductor related EMF). If response time is critical, TVS diodes are specially designed to handle fast and big spikes. The following diagram demonstrates how to set up a zener or TVS diode for shunting excess voltage. Note that you must match the zener or TVS diode according to your supply voltage. Inductor and Pi/Gamma Filter When a switched high current device causes sharp changes to the input voltage to a regulator, you need to make this change smoother. A pi lter is a circuit with two capacitors and an inductor. The inductor is inline in the supply voltage (between the input voltage and the input of the regulator. One capacitor is between ground and the input voltage, while the other one is between the input of the regulator and ground. The rst capacitor (between ground and input voltage) is for ltering noise going back to the supply. In our scenario, the noise is coming from the supply, so this capacitor is not needed. We just removed one leg of the symbol pi, making it look like gamma. The purpose of the inductor is to stop any sudden increase or decrease of current. Note that an inductor is more eective at this than a capacitor. The capacitor between the input of the regulator and ground acts as an additional bumper to soak up additional shock energy of the sudden change. As an analogy, the inductor is the size and mass of a tire, whereas the capacitor is the spring of a suspension. Of course, the next logical question is, how do we calculate the values of the capacitor and inductor? The answer to this question depends on many factors, including the average current consumed by the regulator (load current), the magnitude of the input voltage step, the tolerance of the regulator and etc. Instead of purchasing dierent inductors for testing, you can use the equation at http://home.earthlink.net/ jimlux/hv/wheeler.htm or http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Workshop/advice/coils/air coils.html. Air core inductors are nice because they are easy to make from insulated solid-core copper wires. Choose the thickness that suits your current requirements.

CHAPTER 9. NOISE RELATED PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

VDD

D1 IN 1N4148

OUT GND

GND

IC1

VCC

9.2. METHODS TO REDUCE NOISE

VDD

D1 IN 1N4148

OUT GND

GND

IC1

VCC

CHAPTER 9. NOISE RELATED PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

Chapter 10

PID Loop
10.1 The Theory

The drive system of a robot is control system. In order for this system to behave predictably, it should be a closed-loop control system. This means some feedback should be used to adjust the output to the motors. This section discusses the theory of a well-known method of closed loop control: PID (proportional integral and dierential). For any control, there is a set point. The set point is what is the feedback should read. Let us use s(t) to represent the set point (reference) at time t. The actual feedback, f (t), however, if very unlikely to be at s(t). As a result, there is an error term, which is simply the dierence of the two, e(t) = s(t) f (t). Based on the error term, a control system adjusts the output to the system. In continuous terms, the output of a control system, k(t) is expressed as follows:
t

k(t) = Kp e(t) + Ki
0

e(x)dx + Kd

de(t) dt

(10.1)

10.1.1

The Proportional Term

The proportional term is merely a scaled error e(t). This term makes perfect sense. When e(t) is large, it means our set point is far away from the feedback. As a result, the output needs to be very high in order to bring the feedback closer to the set point. As our feedback gets closer, e(t) becomes smaller, and it makes sense to reduce the output so we dont overshoot. In a lossless system, just relying on Kp e(t) should get us to the set point, eventually. However, because all practical systems are not lossless, Kp e(t) never gets us to the set point. This is because at some point, the term Kp e(t) is merely enough to counter the loss, and the system enters a steady state in which the input (from the heater or motor) cancels the output (heat loss or friction). Despite the fact that Kp e(t) is not sucient by itself, it is the main component during the rst phase of approaching the set point. Physically, Kp e(t) is the bulk of the response to changes.

10.1.2

The Integration Term

The integration term, Ki 0 e(x)dx is the area between the set point and the feedback in a plot against time. As the proportional term Kp e(t) runs out of gas as the feedback gets closer to the set point, the t t integration term Ki 0 e(x)dx continues to increase. As a result, the summation of Kp e(t) + Ki 0 e(x)dx should eventually become large enough so that any loss of the system is balanced by the contribution of t Ki 0 e(x)dx. 51

CHAPTER 10. PID LOOP

Note that that the integration term is not entirely independent from the proportional term. As the integration term helps to bring feedback closer to the set point, the proportional term gets even smaller. Eventually, in a tuned system, as the feedback becomes the same as the set point, the entire output comes from the integration term. t Physically, Ki 0 e(x)dx is the amount of output necessary to balance loss of the system. This term is very dependent on how the other two terms are set up, although it will, eventually, get the feedback to match the set point.

10.1.3

The Derivative Term

The derivative term, Kd de(t) only contributes when there is an abrupt change of e(t). This change can dt be due to a change of set point, or it can be due to a change of feedback. A sudden change of feedback can be due to external factors such as a bump on the road. This term is also called the dampening term because it dampens the eect of the other two terms. As e(t) gets smaller, Kd de(t) is negative. In fact, for motor control, Kd de(t) is very negative to begin with dt dt because the response of a motor is stronger at lower speeds. So why do we need the derivative term? One use of the derivative term is so that we can crank up Kp . With a dampening term, we can adjust the other two terms so that the output does not zzle out as the feedback gets closer to the set t point. Note that Kp e(t) zzles out by itself anyway, but Ki 0 e(x)dx contributes more in time. Also, the response of a motor decreases as speed increases.

10.2

From Continuous to Discrete

In a discrete system, we can transform the previous equation to a discrete form (t is a natural number): k(t) = Kp e(t) + Kd (e(t) e(t n)) + Ki e(t) (10.2)

Note that the division of n for the dierential term is absorbed by Kd . Why choose n instead of 1? To get a dierential, we just need to compare the error of time t to the error at time t 1. This issue will be addressed later. It should be noted that the sum term should be reset every time the reference is changed. This is because the integration of errors should be particular to a particular reference.

10.3

Practical Concerns

The main equation is simple, now comes the gritty details.

10.3.1

Resolution of Output

First, there is the resolution of the output. Since most robots are controlled by pulse-width-modulation (PWM), the output is an adjustment of the duty cycle of the PWM signal. The real question is, then, the resolution of PWM. Obviously, a resolution of 2 (1 bit) is not sucient. That would be the same as on-o control. On the other hand, a resolution of 1024 (10 bits) is too much because most mechanical systems have errors that exceed 0.1%. For a mechanical system that has an inherent error of 1%, 128 divisions for the PWM is enough. We will use rk to represent the number of bits to represent the output.

10.3. PRACTICAL CONCERNS

10.3.2

The Resolution of e(t) and Kp

The proportional term is the main component of the output of a PID loop. As a result, Kp is an important coecient, as is the error term itself. We need to determine the resolution of the error term, e(t). Let us consider a system where the speed can be up to xticks/s. This means the error term can be up to 2x because the motor can be spinning full speed backward and ask to spin full speed forward. The next factor is how often to run the PID loop logic. The frequency of the loop f helps to determine the resolution of the error term. Although the actual error can be up to 2xticks/s, between each PID invocation, the dierence only be up to 2x . For example, if the top speed of a reversible system is 1200 f ticks/s, and the PID loop is invoked at 50Hz, e(t) can only range from -48 to 48, which can be represented by a 7-bit signed integer. The number of bit required for e(t) is, then, re = log
4x f

log 2

(10.3)

When re is close to rk , the magnitude of Kp is small. This means you need to rely on fractions in Kp to ne tune the terms. Instead of using oating point numbers, many small MCUs benet from the use of more ecient integer/xed number computations. For example, even if we know that Kp does not exceed 4, we can use 8 bits to represent it. The least signicant 6 bits become fractional terms. Given an integral bit pattern of 101101012 , the actual represented value is 101101012 . The division by 26 is inexpensively performed by right shift operations. 26

10.3.3

The Resolution of the Integration Term

The integration term is important because it allows a system to reach the reference. Without the integration term, a PID loop can never achieve the reference signal. The integral term relies on the summation of errors. This sum can become much larger than the error term itself. It is advisable to put limits on this term (caps). The range of the integral term should be about 20 times that of the range of the error term. Due to the magnitude of the error term, there is no problem with resolution in the integration term. Because the integration is a large number to start with, the coecient Ki must be a small fraction. This is easily done by assuming the binary point to the to the left of the most signicant bit of the binary integer representing Ki . The trouble, however, is that we now have a large number multiplied by another large number. This can take a bit of time for an 8-bit system. As a result, some control systems choose to ignore some of the less signicant digits to speed up computation.

10.3.4

The Resolution of the Dierential Term

The dierential term is the change of error. While this term can have the same magnitude as the error term itself, most of the time it is very small (one tenth the magnitude of the error term itself or smaller). In a continuous system, this is not a problem because there is innite precision. However, in a digital system, this poses the problem of digitizing the contribution from the dierential term. Instead of just relying on the number of ticks between PID invocations, we can also rely in the period between ticks. Although period is proportional to the inverse of speed, it is still more accurante compared to the number of ticks at slow speeds. Consider a realistic case where a system expects about 1000 ticks per second. This translated to one tick of millisecond. However, as the system slows down to rely on friction to come to a complete stop, the speed can be down to a small number (such as one) of ticks per second. It becomes impossible to know the actual speed. Using a timer, however, we can track the period between ticks and use the period to deduce the actual speed.

CHAPTER 10. PID LOOP

If we consider the worst case of a 16 count timer for a 50Hz PID invocation frequency, the lowest 1 frequency is 50Hz, while the next lowest frequency (due to digitization) is 15/1620ms , which translates to 53.3Hz. This resolution is better than 7%, even when the tick count per time method fails. While 7% may not sound like a lot, it makes a lot of dierence when there is nothing lese to rely on.

10.4
10.4.1

Improving Feedback Resolution

The Problem

The feedback and set point are both in units of ticks per PID period up to this point. This is okay for most cases, assuming the encoding has sucient resolution. However, for robots with low resolution encoders, and also for low-speed situations, just counting ticks between PID invocations produces coarse and quantized results. Let us assume the PID control loop is invoked at 20Hz (20 times per second). Let us also assume the encoder disk has 1000 transitions per revolution. At a very low speed, such as 0.1 revolutions per second, we only get 100 ticks per second. This is divided by 20 because the sampling frequency is 20Hz. As a result, we only have, on the average, 5 ticks per period. The error term is going to be even more quantized because it is the dierence between the set point and the feedback. As a result, the control signal has very poor resolution because it depends on the error term.

10.4.2

A Solution

A solution is to compute the period between ticks, and use its reciprocal as the speed. This method is not suitable when there is sucient encoding resolution because reciprocal is dicult to compute (compared to counting ticks), and the resolution of the period-oriented approach drops as speed increases. However, at lower speeds, this period-oriented method yields much better resolution than tick counting. In our previous example, using the tick count method, 0.1r/s cannot be distinguished from 0.09r/s because both yields about 5 ticks per PID invocation. However, using the period measurement, 0.1r/s results in a period of 10ms, whereas 0.09r/s results in a period of 11.1ms. Even with a timing resolution of 1ms, we can still distinguish 0.09r/s from 0.1r/s. Note that timing resolution can be improved by hardware peripherals. The ATMega128, for example, has an input capture device associated with timer 1. It can record the duration of a pulse at resolutions down to single clock periods.

10.4.3

Practical Considerations

Although we can improve the resolution of low speed encoding, the benet may not be useful because of other problems. For example, due to the nature of DC motors, they are not smooth at lower speeds. As a result, it may not be practically useful to use period measurement to improve the encoding resolution at lower speeds.

Chapter 11

Logic Interface
Because the stepper motor logic is mostly interrupt driven, but the AI is continuous, we need an interface design to let interrupt driven logic communicate with background logic. This chapter discusses and compares some common methods.

11.1

General Interrupt Service Routine Philosophy

The general idea is to keep the execution of ISRs as short as possible. This is because we want to minimize the duration in which interrupt is disabled. This approach ensure the latency of any interrupt remains short. Note that some architectures allow interrupt be reenabled in an ISR. This is not recommended because stacked ISR invocation can be very tricky, and it leads to unnecessary problems (such as reentrancy issues, stack space issues and etc.) The propoer solution is to use a simple run-time kernel. Threads can wait for a signal to continue, and ISRs can generate the signals to let the threads continue execution. This type of design is most suitable to relatively infrequent interrupts. Without a run-time kernel, it may be necessary to prolong the execution of an ISR because decoupling is more dicult. In this case, it may necessary to reenable interrupt within an ISR. To reduce latency, interrupt should be reenabled as soon as the cause of the interrupt is handled. All subsequent processing can execute with interrupt enabled.

11.2

Asynchronous and Continuous Code Interface

Asynchronous code can be the ISRs themselves, or threads triggered by ISRs. Regardless, the execution of such code is hardware triggered. Continuous code, on the other hand, executes in the background. The interface between these two types of code can be dicult. One of the easiest way is to let continuous code check bits that are set by asynchronous code. This method is wasteful because of the busy wait nature. A more elegant solution is to use threading.

CHAPTER 11. LOGIC INTERFACE

Part IV

Micromouse

Chapter 12

Project Management
12.1 The Necessity

Project management, or there lack of, can make or break a project. This is the case regardless of the expertise level of participants. It is, therefore, extremely important to understand project management. Without proper project management, resources are not fully utilized, conicts arise among team members and nothing gets done.

12.2

Resource Requirements

A team must rst understand the resource requirements of a project. In Micromouse projects, there are several types of resources.

12.2.1

Finance

Micromouse projects can be expensive (US 1000 and more), although they can also be quite inexpensive (between US 200 to US 250). The actual expense depends on your design philosophy and expertise. More expertise tend to lower the cost because materials and tools are better utilized. A typical project will cost about 200 to 500 if tools and materials are not readily available. A team must have all members agreeing to a budget before starting on a project. Otherwise, if a team runs out of budget in the middle of a project and have members disagree on how to proceed, it can potentially kill the project and turn members against each other.

12.2.2

Tools and Materials

If members of a team already have access to the necessary tools and materials, the actual expense can be lowered considerably. Some of the tools/materials include the following:

temperature controlled soldering station a PCB holder for soldering soldering supplies (solder, ux, cleaning pads,...) general tools: electric drill, electric saw, vise, les inspection tools: magnifying glass, loupe test equipment: DMM, DMM probes, osciloscope probes, jumper wires
59

CHAPTER 12. PROJECT MANAGEMENT

programming tools: notebook computers (low-end ones are okay), inexpensive desktops (to be left
in the lab)

misc. items: binders for manuals, etc.

12.2.3 Time
This is the most important resource of all. Even given the best team members and the best tools, a team still need time to complete a project. Although EEC194 is listed as a 5-unit, 3-quarter class, the actual requirement exceeds the units. 1 unit of lab translates to 3 hours of actual lab time. 1 unit of lecture translates to 1 hour of lecture and 2 hours of preparation and homework. In other words, you should spend something like 6 hours on the Micromouse projects every week for the Fall and Spring quarters. I understand you are taking other classes as well. However, if the team is to get the project done, each member must allocate sucient time for the Micromouse project. In order to aide the allocation of time, a team should have a xed weekly meeting time or several xed sessions. All members of a team should attend the meetings as well as the lectures and labs. Since the lecture/lab will take about 2 hours per week, each team should allocate somewhere between 2 to 4 hours for team meetings.

12.3

Personnel Issues

Every year, at least one or even two teams break down completely due to personnel issues. This is bad for everyone since no work is done and I cannot have an excuse to assign a reasonable grade. Although it is not possible (or nearly so) to change personalities, it is possible to use certain means to reduce the frequency and intensity of personnel issues.

12.3.1

Regular Meetings

Besides the class meeting time, set up another regular meeting time for the team. Make it mandatory for all members to show up at all class meeting and team meeting times. Yes, there will be times when certain members do not have assignment. However, these members can still contribute to the project as a whole. For example, the person responsible for mechanical design can spot and diagnose a software bug in the wall mapping software. Experience has taught me the value of a role sheet for each the meetings. In other words, state who attend each meeting. You can even go to the extent of stating the arrival time and departure time of each member. This role sheet can serve important purposes in the future if there is a dispute of who did what and who did not do what. Also, have one member keep track of the discussions in the meetings. This is important because it is easy to forget the action items and conclusions in a meeting. A tape recording is ne, but reviewing/replaying a tape can be more troublesome than just reviewing points in a plain text le.

12.3.2

Focus on the Tasks

A lot of times, focusing on the tasks instead of attitudes helps to resolve some personnel issues. Focus on what needs to be done, and how to get it done. Of course, it only takes one member in a team to have an attitude problem to drag everyone else into a ght. If members of a team cannot focus on the tasks, please inform me as early as possible.

12.4. TASK MANAGEMENT

12.4

Task Management

A project can usually be divided into smaller tasks. It is a science to manage tasks, but the principles are very simple. First of all, gure out the dependency of tasks. Next, schedule tasks so that they follow the dependencies. Last, parallelize tasks if possible and make the most ecient use of available resources. The following is a list of general tasks and dependencies. 1. Understand the competition and rules of the competition. 2. Understand the overall design of micromouse robots, no details are needed. This depends on 1. 3. Search for sources of components and materials. Do not get xated on any particular models. Just get a general feel and get catalogs of available components. Do this after 2. 4. Determine/Specify the requirements of a micromouse robot. You can do this as soon as 1 is completed. 5. Design multiple alternative designs based on the information collected in 3. Rule out certain designs based on the requirements determined in 4 6. Among the alternatives in 5, select the best design. 7. After taskSelectBest, acquire the necessary components. 8. Test each component acquired in 7. This is particularly important for components that are not well specied (such as surplus items). 9. You may need to repeat 5, 6, 7 and 8 if a component does not meet the requirements. 10. Assemble the micromouse using the tested components from 8. 11. Test the assembled unit from 10. You probably need to rene the design a little to make it work better. It is not obvious from this list that multiple threads can proceed at the same time. For example, even before motors are acquired and tested, the processor board can be assembled and tested. This assumes, of course, the type of motor is already determined (DC versus stepper) because the type of motor does have an impact on processing resource requirements.

12.5

Task Forces

I suggest each group be divided into smaller task forces. I know, we are already talking about groups of 5 or fewer people. Nonetheless, task forces are still useful for such small groups. Task forces can be permanent or temporary. For example, when the drive system and chassis are being designed, a temporary task force for the overall mechanical design is useful. Another example is a temporary task force that researches what embedded controllers are available and evaluate dierent options. At a later stage, a tuning task force can help the ne tuning of the robot. This task force may or may not include the programming members because the programmers are probably busy enough already.

CHAPTER 12. PROJECT MANAGEMENT

12.6

Communication

Project management requires communication. It is not a question of hours, it is a question of eectiveness. Keep meeting minutes if possible, or record each meeting so important points are not easily forgotten. Have your own mailing list to make sending email to all members easy. The bottom line is that everyone should be on the same page. Everyone should know what the current task(s) is/are and when each task should be done. Everyone should understand what others are doing in case changes become necessary. Now, you dont have to tell everyone about every line that is changed in software. However, if your change aects other people, you have to notify people who will be aected. Version control is complex all by itself. However, you can (properly) use some tools to help make that less complex. I suggest the use of CVS for version control. This software can be run as a server so multiple developers can access the repository concurrently. It also allows non-conicting changes to the same le. Best of all, it is robust and free! Save your email messages so you can refer to them later. Make a folder so that Micromouse email does not mess up your main email folder.

12.7

Timeline

While progress is usually not predictable and is subject to availability of time from other classes, home assignments and exams, one can use a basic time line to estimate what should be done by what time. The following is just an estimated scheduled based on successful teams in the past. Q4 is the Fall quarter, Q1 is the Winter quarter of the following year, and Q2 is the Spring quarter of the following year.

First four weeks of Q4. Form teams, distribute tasks and duties among members. Submit overall
specs. in terms of target mouse characteristics. Focus on lectures and reading materials.

Second four weeks of Q4. Analyze design requirements, evaluate alternative parts, select and Third four weeks of Q4.
specify parts. Dene interfaces among components. Submit design analysis and justication. Get high level AI software working, specify controller board. Acquire parts. Assemble mechanical components, including chassis, motors, gears, wheels and etc. A working chassis should be available during the Winter break with all components mounted (maybe except for the sensors).

First four weeks of Q1. Have all rst generation components completed. Test each component Second four weeks of Q1. Motion control should be done, robot should be able to perform hard Third four weeks of Q1. Integrate components. High level AI software, mid-level motion control First week of Q2. Yellow alert state. Iron out all the known problems, robots should solve mazes Second week of Q2. Red alert state. Last week before Picnic Day to ne tune and optimize the
relatively reliably. robots. Make sure spare parts are available. Calibrate and test robots with the actual maze board the night before Picnic Day. Sleep well and look sharp on Picnic Day! and sensor software should be fully integrated with the low level interrupt based engine. Designs based on DC motors should have PID loop tuned. Robot should now be tested in a real maze (maybe shrunk to 4x4) to see if it solves the maze. coded blind motions involving linear and angular combinations. All electronic components should be designed and produced. Sensors should be tested. Controller board should be complete. individually and redesign/reimplement if the design does not meet the initial specications. Get ready for integration.

12.7. TIMELINE

Second two weeks of Q2.

Second four weeks of Q2.

If a robot does not solve the maze on Picnic Day, use these two weeks to make it work to get a B. Work on nal report. Working robots may compete in Region 6 competition. If a robot does not work during the rst four weeks of Q2, get it working by the 8th week to get a C. the nal report by the last day of nals.

Third four weeks of Q2. Finish a draft of the nal report and submit it to me for review. Submit

CHAPTER 12. PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Chapter 13

The Competition
This chapter describes the Micromouse competition and interpretation of the rules. You should always double check with an ocer of the local student chapter of IEEE in case of doubt. For an original unabridged version, please refer to http://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/ ieee/umouse/rules.shtml. This section only emphasizes on less obvious and confusing items of the original rules.

13.1

Specication for the Maze

Note the sentences The coating on the top and sides of the walls should be selected to reect infrared light and the coating on the oor shall absorb it. All material reect some infrared light. So this sentence, when interpreted in the most general sense, does not say anything. What should have written is the minimum reectance (as a ratio) of the top and side or walls and the maximum reectance of the oor. Given this sentence and the common interpretation, it means the walls (top and side) reect signicantly more infrared light compared to the oor. Although no frequency is specied, you can assume it is near infrared, which goes from 880nm to 980nm. Also, note the following sentence, The dimensions of the maze shall be accurate to within 5% or 2cm, whichever is less. This is very important! This means your mouse has to handle errors of the maze itself. The statement does not say whether it is 5% to each side of the specied dimension or 5% as a total. I am assuming it is a total. This still means the height of walls can range from 4.875cm to 5.125cm. You have to assume the variance can exist in the same maze. You should design your robot so that dimension sensitive parts are easily adjustable in the eld, or use some software technique to compensate for the error factor.

13.2

Specications for the Micro Mouse

This section is relatively simple and clear. The only thing worth mentioning is that the geometry during a run shall never be greater than 25cm by 25cm. This statement does not preclude a robot from transforming itself during a run as long as the overall geometry always ts within a 25cm by 25cm box. 65

CHAPTER 13. THE COMPETITION

13.3

Rules for the Contest

This section is the most interesting one. The HTML version of the rule is somewhat garbled in S equations. The handicapped time should have been R + 30 B, in which R is the time taken for the run, S is the start time of the run, and B is 10 seconds if the robot has remained untouched up to the end of the run. This equation favors autonomous robots that do not require any intervention. Also, note that a run time is the time it takes for a Micromouse to travel from the start square to the destination square. This means manually moving the robot from the destination back to the start square is worth it if it will take 10 30 or 5 minutes for the robot to autonomously travel back to the rst square. The time limit is 15 minutes. Because of the start time component in the handicapped time, later runs are generally less likely to take less handicapped time even if the paths are more optimized. The following statement is a little value: The starting procedure of the Micromouse shall not oer a choice of strategies to the handler. Obviously, you cannot ip switches when you are string the robot for a competition. However, this does not mean you cannot have switches and alternative strategies. You just have to choose the strategies before the maze is unveiled. In addition, the robot can autonomously choose the next strategy based on what it has learned. The rules explicitly say that the illumination, temperature and humidity of the competition site can be changed at the discretion of the contest ocials. This means dont count on it. Make you robot so it can handle a tough environment (itll still be in door and somewhat comfortable to people). Note that if you replace parts of the robot, you may be requested to erase memory of the maze. This means dont let your robot run out of battery in the middle of a competition. There is no rule regarding memory of the maze when a robot is manually placed to the start square because it appears to be malfunctioning. Malfunctioning typically includes crashing into a wall. This means you can let the robot retain most of the map (except for the last cell or two right before it crashed). In order to observe the rule that says no strategy oering at start up, you need to design the logic of the mouse such that it clears the maze once when it is powered up (which is not a choice). Ever since this powering up, the robot retains the map even when it crashes. You use one single button to instruct the robot to begin from the start square again after it is picked up. In fact, the robot should stop when the button is pushed, and only restart after the button is released. This gives the handler time to place it in the maze. If you decide to retain the map after a crash, you have to be careful about the last few walls entered into the map. They can be wrong! If in doubt, erase more walls. All useful algorithms are greedy, which means even if the robot assumes fewer walls then there really are, it will still be able to explore and eventually gure out the shortest path.

Chapter 14

Errors
Nothing is perfect, you can count on that. Even if you try your best to make your robot as precise as possible, there will be errors that you cannot control. For example, the oor of the maze can have pot-holes and spots where traction is low (due to dust). The maze can have up to 5% tolerance according to the rules. Fortunately, if you prepare the robot for errors, most errors can be corrected before they are not recoverable. This chapter discusses various sources of errors and how such errors can be detected and corrected.

14.1

Sources of Errors

If you use DC motors, motion control can be tricky and introduces errors by itself. Even if you use stepper motors, you can still have various types of errors due to the environment.

14.1.1

Wheel Errors

Depending on the manufacturing quality of your wheels, you can get errors from the wheels. If a wheel is not perfectly round, the linear speed of the robot varies even as the wheel turns at a perfectly constant rate. If a robot uses dierential steering, uneven speed translates to turning (slightly) and therefore changing direction (slowly). The robot will travel in an S shaped line. Even if a wheel is perfectly round, you can still experience uneven linear speed as the wheel turns at a constant angular speed. This is because the axle may not be at the center of the wheel. This also causes the robot to travel in an S shaped line instead of a straight line. If the two wheels of a dierentially steered robot are dierent in size, the robot will always skew to one side (the side with the smaller wheel).

14.1.2

Stepper Motor Errors

Stepper motors can skip steps when they operate close to the maximum operation speed under load. A small bump on the maze oor can easily shock a motor so that the resulting torque causes the motor to skip at least one step.

14.1.3

Traction Related Errors

When the tire of a wheel travels over the maze oor, it can encounter spots where traction is low. Stepper motors inherently move the robot in steps. Therefore, the loss of traction can easily make the tire skid on slipery spots. 67

CHAPTER 14. ERRORS

When the robot is turning, wide tires result in errors because the traction surface is large. For turning, the ideal contact surface should be a single point. This is because a wide tire contacts the surface in a line, and dierent points of this line (as concentric circles around the turning pivot) want to travel at dierent speeds. However, because the wheel is driven by a single axle, all points of the tire surface must travel at the same speed. This means some parts of the contact surface have to skid, and skidding always introduce errors. Note that with traction related errors, a robot may travel more than what it intends, or it may travel less than what it intends. This is because you get errors during acceleration (which shortens the actual distance), and you also get errors during deceleration (which lengthens the actual distance).

14.1.4

Maze Tolerance

A maze can have up to 5% error. This means over the length of a 12-by-12 maze, there can be up to about 5cm of error. 5cm may not sound like a whole lot, but if a robot stops 5cm short of the destination and it makes a turn, the resulting path will start with a 5cm oset error, which is a lot of error to correct.

14.2

Reducing Errors

Instead of just correcting errors as they occur, you should also try to minimize errors to start with. Here are some suggestions that help reduce the amount of errors to start with so that any remaining errors can be corrected more easily.

14.2.1

Tire Width

For racing, wider is better. However, for precision purposes, narrow tires perform better. This is especially the case when a robot is turning, and Micromice turn a lot. On the other hand, the width tires should still be sucient to provide enough traction. The shape of tires also has impact on precision. O-ring type of tires has the least contact surface, therefore it provides the most precision. Flat tires (rubber bands) have more contact surface and are therefore less precise. If your tires have contact widths of more than 5mm, they are probably too wide.

14.2.2

Wheel Roundness

If you purchase your wheels, there is little that you an do. If you manufacture your own wheels, there is an easy way to make your wheels round. Use a screw that matches the wheels hole size, two large washers and a nut to attach the wheel to a power drill or drill table. Then x the power drill onto a clamp or some other attachment surface. As the drill turns, use a chisel to work on the wheel. Only use a corner of the chisel to begin the process, and never apply too much force. As long as the process is gradual, the resulting wheel is always round because of the rotation of the drill.

14.2.3

Wheel Center

Again, if you buy your wheels, there is little you can do to x o centered axle holes. If you make your own wheels, use the techniques of the previous section to ensure the axle hole is centered.

14.2.4

Traction

Any type of rubbery material has lots of traction. However, some are more durable than others. Rubber bands are cheap (even free!), but they do not last very long. Inner tubes of bicyle tires, on the other

14.3. DETECTING ERRORS

hand, are made from durable rubber. If you have a at inner tube (of a mountain bike), cut it in small sections and t the sections over the wheels. An alternative is to use paint-on grippy materials. You can purchase these materials in cans from most home improvement stores (usually in the paint section). If you want to go with this approach, be patient and paint in layers. Trying to paint one single thick layer usually ends up with uneven coating and aects the roundness of the nished product. Silicone and latex sealants (also called caulks) also have lots of traction. Unfortunately, these materials tend to be very thick. It is dicult to apply these materials onto the wheels evenly. Again, one trick is to use an attached power drill as a lathe to help evenly apply sealant. Unless you need sealant for other purposes, you can purchase the more expensive pressurized cans for easier application. You can also purchase the toothpaste-like tubes so you dont need use a caulk gun. Try to look for sealants that remains permanently exible so you got both traction and suspension.

14.3

Detecting Errors

The previous section discusses method to passively reduce errors. This section introduces methods to actively detect errors.

14.3.1

Length to Sensors

The more distance between the sensors and the center of rotation, the more sensitive the sensors are to angular errors. This is nothing more than geometry. For example, if individual sensors are 6mm apart, and the length between the sensor banks and the center of rotation is 200mm, then the sensitivity of 96 90 angular errors is arctan 200 arctan 200 , which is 24.23 25.64 = 1.41 degrees. Assuming the same basic design but a shorter distance of 100mm between the sensor banks and the center of rotation, the 90 96 sensitivity becomes arctan 100 arctan 100 which evaluates to 41.99 43.83 = 1.84 degrees.

14.3.2

Sensor Placement (Lookdown Sensors)

Instead of placing the middle sensor right in the middle of where the top of a wall should be, you can use two sensors right on the edge of the top of a wall. This design allows more sensitivity to oset and skew errors.

14.3.3

Distance Sensors

Instead of using discrete sensors to sense the distance to a wall, you can consider using an analog distance sensor like the Sharp GP2D12. An obvious advantage is that the distance measurement is no longer discrete, the resolution is limited only by electrical noise and the ADC (10-bit ADCs are built-in to the ATMega128). Another advantage that has nothing to do with error detection is that you dont need sensor banks hanging in front of the robot if you use these distance sensors. A disadvantage is that you cannot see beyond a wall. With look-down sensors hanging from wings that look over walls, a robot can map immediate walls on the other side of walls surrounding the robot.

14.4

Error Toloerance and Correction

The error tolerance has to do with how much error can a robot make before it cannot recover. Error correction is the procedure to utilize detected errors and x them.

CHAPTER 14. ERRORS

14.4.1

Tolerance

It is dicult to describe error tolerance in general. However, some tolerances are easy to compute. Skew tolerance How much angular error can a robot make before it cannot recover or crash into a wall? Obviously, when the sensors can no longer detect the top of a wall (when there is one), there is too much skew error. However, the actual skew tolerance has more to do with how much space a robot needs to correct skew errors. When the robot is stationary, space (distance) is not a problem because dierentially steered robots require no distance to rotate. However, when a robot is traveling at a certain speed, it will take some distance before the error is corrected. Unlike oset errors, skew errors continue to accumulate oset until it is corrected. The real limiting factor is how fast the motors can change speeds to steer a robot. The steering needs to factor in maximum linear acceleration/deceleration as well as angular acceleration. There may be a closed mathematical form for this tolerance computation. However, I am not a mathematician. Instead, you can use a simulator to help you gure out exactly how much skew error your robot can suer. Parallel Oset Parallel oset errors refer to the distances from where a robot is supposed to stop and make an in-place turn. Note that parallel oset errors can combine with skew errors at blind turns. Perpendicular Oset Perpendicular oset is the error distance of the center of the robot to the center of its path.

14.4.2

Correction

Error correction relies on hints provided by sensors. Although a robot may be equipped with simple look-down sensors, it can still sense a lot of clues to help correct errors before it is too late. Position of Top of Wall If you use look-down sensors, the sensors can indicate the position of the top of the wall relative to the sensor banks. If the sensor bank is placed ahead of the robot, both skew and perpendicular oset errors can yield similar positions. Fortunately, the correction is the same regardless. With sensor banks in front of the robot, skewing to the left has similar sensor readings as perpendicularly osetting to the left. The correction is steering right for both cases. When a robot turns (especially in an in-place turn), the top of wall position can be used to help the robot determine when to decelerate and even patch angular errors. As a robot turns, some sensor will rst detect a wall. The robot should slow down the turn because it should know the number of steps to perform. Top of Wall Transitions Parallel walls an appear and disappear as a robot travels. The transitions can be used for a robot to resynchronize its location in the maze. Even a path with just pegs will provide sucient clues to resynchronize. The worst conguration is a straight corridor with just contiguous walls and no perpendicular walls even on the other side of the walls.

Chapter 15

Sensors
Sensors are extremely important for any robot. We can talk about sensors in general, but in an application like Micromouse, we can customize the discussion so the sensors are optimized for this application.

15.1

Purposes

The sensors on a micromouse serve several purposes. The rst purpose, regardless of the exploration algorithm and approach, is to make sure the robot can detect errors. No robot is perfect, no maze is 100% made to specication. Errors are a way of life. Sensitive sensors that can detect slight errors can help the robot correct errors before errors accumulate to a level that can no longer be corrected (and the robot crashes into a wall). The second purpose of sensors on a micromouse is to map the maze. Of course, this purpose only makes sense for smart mice. Wall huggers do not need to really map and remember the walls. For this second purpose, sensors that can sense further is better. This makes it possible for a robot to nd walls that are not immediately around it. Sensors that can sense far walls minimize robot movement during the exploration phase and save time.

15.2

Sensor Types

There are many types of sensors that you can use. I am dividing the sensors based on approach instead of implementation.

15.2.1

Range Finding

Range nding sensors are very useful because they can typically sense walls that are not immediately around the robot. As discussed earlier, this reduces robot movement during the exploration phase. On the other hand, range nding sensors, at one point or another, must rely on the accuracy of some analog circuit. This can introduce noise and uncertainly to the error detection mapping logic. IR Reective Intensity This is the simplest of all range nding sensors. An IrED shines IR to a potential wall, and a phototransistor picks up the intensity of the reected radiation. In theory, the intensity is the inverse of distance squared. In practice, this type of approach is only useable for very close range applications. First of all, dierent types of white paint may not reect the same amount of IR! If a maze is painted with dierent types of white paint, calibration becomes impossible. 71

CHAPTER 15. SENSORS

Figure 15.1: Conguration of IR rangending sensors In addition, micromice are suppposed to work in a normal environment with ambient lighting. If hot lamps are used, they also produce IR. How can a robot distinguish IR from background lighting versus its own IrEDs? Well, you can use modulation to screen out some of the ambient light. However, this does get somewhat ugly in terms of signal to noise ratio. IR Triangulation In this approach, an IrED is also used to shine a focused beam of modulated IR. Unlike the previous approach, however, the sensor is not a single phototransistor. Typically, the sensor is a linear array of CMOS or charged-couple devices. Due to the triangulation angular dierence of reection at dierent distances, dierent individual sensor cells sees the illuminated spot. This is then converted either to a digial or an analog signal as output. This approach is not prone to varying reectance of surfaces because it is not intensity-based. Furthermore, this type of sensor is self-contained with the lens and sensors. You do need to provide either a digital or an analog interface to read the distance, however. Furthermore, most of these sensors are consistent but not calibrated. This means even though a particular sensors provides the same reading at the same distance all the time, it may not be the same reading as another sensor. Interpreting the results of IR triangulation is not straightforward. The distance is not linear to the output of the sensor. A translation table is usually needed if you need to know the distance. Even when a distance is available, you still need to know which wall reects the IR based on the distance. Be prepared to spend some time on sensor interpretation logic if you are using IR triangulation sensors. You can use this type of sensor for both error correction and mapping. For error correction, you should consider arranging the sensors so that they are not at 0, 90 and 270 degrees from the direction of motion. Instead, you need two sensors that sense at an angle so they can sense the side of walls that are ahead of the robot. Refer to gure 15.1 for illustration. The typical range of this type of sensor is from 100mm to 10000mm. This is a very useful range for micromouse applications. In addition, the precision (based on triangulation) is much better at shorter distances, which means such sensors are useful for both error correction and mapping. This type of sensor is not cheap. An analog sensor typically costs 8 to 15. However, one sensor can replace many individual sensors in other types of designs.

Ultrasound Time-of-Flight Polaroid has used ultrasound sensors for auto-focus applications for many years. You can use the same type of sensors in micromice. Micromouse mazes are made from materials that reect enough ultrasound for range nding purposes.

15.2. SENSOR TYPES

Figure 15.2: Conguration of IR reective sensors Ultrasound does have a few diculties compared to IR. First of all, it takes a lot energy to produce enough ultrasound for ranging purposes. Your battery system must be capable of supplying bursts of high current. Ultrasound production is dicult to focuse, which makes the out going cone kind of large. This means it is dicult to tell what reected the detected ultrasound. Ultrasound sensors are not cheap, either. They are typically more expensive than IR triangulation type sensors.

15.2.2

Existence

Existence sensors are binary. Each can tell whether a wall exists or not. You have to use many existence sensors for error correction purposes because you need a sensor to track each potential location that the wall may appear. On the other hand, existence sensors are cheap and easy to interface with. They are also very easy to interpret in software. Typically, existence sensors can only detect walls that are immediately around the robot. You can use the entire allow dimension of a micromouse to maximize the mapping capability. IR Reective In an IR reective existence sensor, an IrED shines IR to a location where a wall may exist, then a phototransistor picks up any reected IR (if a wall does exist). IR reective existence sensors are also called look-down sensors because they are typically placed on wings that glide over the top of walls. This type of sensors is the oldest type and also the most commonly used due to they simplicity. They are prone to problems such as vibration (of the wing) because reective sensors are optimized for detecting reection at a certain distance. If the sensors are too far or too close to a surface, they may not register reectance. Reective sensors can be used to detect walls that are not immediately around the robot. By maximizing the width of the sensor wings, reective sensors can sense walls on the other side that are perpendicular to the direction of motion. Refer to 15.2 for a typical conguration of IR reective existence sensors. Reective sensors are also very helpful in rotation error detection because they can be used to align the direction of the robot during a turn. It is probably a good idea to at least prepare a robot to use this type of sensors as a plan B. Even if you have ideas of using much better sensors, it is still safer to make sure the robot can switch to use this type of sensors in case things do not work out as expected. IR Interrupt In an IR interrupt existence sensor, the photo transistor is placed on wings that glide over the top of walls, while the IrED is typically placed at the lower part of the main robot chassis. This way, if a wall exists, it blocks the light path and the robot knows a wall exists.

CHAPTER 15. SENSORS

The best feature of an interrupt existence sensor is the robustness. It is immune to vibration of the sensor banks. Even better, an interrupt sensor has much more time to catch a wall compared to a reective sensor. This is because a reective sensor passes the top of a wall (perpendicular to direction of motion) quickly and only has a few samples to it. An interrupt sensor, however, remains interrupted as long as the wall exists. Interrupt sensors are not with their problems, however. Reective sensors are easy to interpret because they sense the existence of a wall immediately under them. Interrupt sensors, however, sense the existence of a wall that simple blocks the light path. It takes some more logic to translate the sensor readings to the location of walls. Interrupt sensors are best suited for detecting a front wall because they are robust for walls that are perpendicular to the direction of motion. Interrupt sensors are typically useless for detection walls that are not immediately around the robot.

Chapter 16

Sensing
Dierent sensors require dierent sensing strategies. However, there are certain issues that apply to all types of sensors. This chapter discusses methods to read and interpret common types of sensors.

16.1

Common Issues

Regardless of the type of sensor, there are common questions to answer. This section deals with these questions. The next section answers some of these questions for commonly used sensors.

16.1.1

Failure Rate

Failure rate is often measured as mean-time-between-failure. A failure can be one that can be recovered, or one that is permanent. Note that in this context, failure is conditional to the fact that components are operated in an environment that is well within the acceptable operating parameters. In other words, we are not subjecting components to extreme heat and other harmful environments. Most electronic components either work, or they have some kind of manufacturing defects that cause the component to fail. Most manufacturers have in-house test procedures that ensure the functionality of components before such components are shipped. Sometimes, it is necessary to operate a component outside the safe parameters. For example, an IrED may be rated for 20mA of continuous forward current. The same IrED can probably be pulsed at 50s using a 50ms pulse period using a 1A pulse current. However, most IrED manufacturers do not test IrEDs using the 1A pulse current method. As a result, IrEDs that pass the manufacturers test (20mA continuous) may not work when pulsed with 1A, even at a low duty cycle. If you are operating a component outside the safe parameters, you may need to perform your own tests. For example, you may nd that only 75% of all IrEDs can survive the pulsed current test. How you design your own burn in test depends on the type of component as well as how you plan to use it.

16.1.2

Repeatability

Repeatability has nothing to do with accuracy. In other words, a sensor that has superb repeatability may have very poor accuracy. Since we are not in the business of precision scientic apparatus, repeatability is often sucient. Repeatability is the ability of a component to repeat producing the same result under the same conditions. With an object placed at 30cm, does a distance sensor always produce a voltage of 1.62V? If you collect samples of the voltage, you can extract statistics from the samples. 75

CHAPTER 16. SENSING

A high repeatable sensor produces samples that have a small variance. This is a very useful feature because it means you can take very few reading, or just one, in the application. A sensor with poor repeatability needs many samples, or you have to operate with a lot of uncertainty. How about digital sensors, such as look-down sensors? Even though the end result is boolean, these sensors are inherently analog. In other words, you can still measure the output voltage of a divider bridge using a phototransistor using a xed source of IR illumination. Fortunately, most phototransistors are very repeatable.

16.1.3

Accuracy

Accuracy only applies to sensors that are supposed to be calibrated. For calibrated sensors of a particular make/model, the output is supposed to relate to some physical quantities regardless of the individual sensor. For example, if a type of temperature sensor is supposed to generate pulses that are proportional to temperature (say 1ms per o K), all samples of this type of sensor should output a pulse of 273ms in water that is about to freeze. Unless you are using a calibrated sensor (such as one of those expensive laser-based time-of-ight distance sensors), there is no issue of accuracy. For example, the GP2D12 sensors are uncalibrated distance sensors. Each individual one is almost guaranteed to output a dierent voltage at the same distance from an object. This is ne because the manufacturer never claims any consistent relationship between the output voltage and distance across samples. Uncalibrated sensors must be calibrated before they can be used to measure any real physical quantity.

16.1.4

Digital versus Analog

Some sensors, such as look down sensors, are typically used as binary (digital) sensors. Others, such as the GP2D12 sensors, are analog sensors. A binary digital sensor is one that, from the perspective of software, only produces results of 0 and 1. An analog sensor, on the other hand, produces values that has a range (wider than 0 to 1). Note that even though phototransistors are analog sensors that has a dierent ICE depending on the amount of IR energy irradiating the die. However, the use of a comparator or schmidt trigger eectively converts the voltage measured from a voltage divider into just 0 and 1. Binary sensors are easy to interpret, but they do not provide a lot of information, either. On the other hand, analog sensors provide more information, but it requires techniques to fully utilize such extra information. For example, traditionally, lookdown sensors are considered binary. This means either a sensor senses a wall underneath, or it does not sense a wall. Treating a lookdown sensor as an analog sensor (using an ADC), on the other hand, can dierentiate a sensor that is entirely outside a wall from one that is right on the boundary. This extra information translates to higher resolution for the sensor bank location, which in return translates to better error correction behavior.

16.1.5

Sample Time

Sample time is the entire period of time from the instance a sensor captures (transduces) a physical quantity to the time that software is made known aware of it. Many factors aect the sample time of a sensor. The sensor itself, conditioning circuits and the processor each plays a part in the determination of sample time. Short sample time is always desireable. This is because a robot is likely to be in motion during sample time. This means by the time software reads the value, the robot is no longer at the same location, or the physical quantity to measure has already changed.

16.2. USING COMMON SENSOR TYPES

16.2
16.2.1

Using Common Sensor Types

Phototransistor-IrED Pairs

Phototransistor-IrED pairs are very commonly used, yet they are often under utilized. First, most application use a continuous current to energize the IrED, although the sampling of the phototransistor is fairly infrequent. Although the phototransistor-IrED pair does have a lag time due to physical characteristics, the lag time is often in low tens of microseconds. This means the IrED only needs to be switched on about 50s before the phototransistor is sampled. Let us consider a situation in which a sensor is read 100 times per second. If the IrED is energized 50s for only 50s for each sample, the power consumption is reduced to 10ms=0.5% of that of the continuously energized design. Another trick commonly done to phototransistor-IrED pairs is to connect IrEDs in series. Because each IrED only has a forward voltage drop of 1.7V (at 20mA), two can be connected in series when powered by a source of 5V. Obviously, the current limiting resistor value must be adjusted. Given a voltage source of 12V, up to 6 IrEDs can be connected in series. Be careful not to connect too many IrEDs in series. Although some current will ow at a forward voltage of less than 1.7V, the amount is too small to emit any infrared. The last, but most important, trick is to use a high pulse current to energize the IrEDs. Because the pulsing technique reduces the duty cycle of the on-time, we can now use a larger current and stay within the average power dissipation parameters. This turns a dimly lit light into a strobe. It helps to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (most noise comes from background lighting), and reduce the value of the pull-up resistor (to improve recovery time). The one drawback of this approach is the loss of repeatability. The pulsing circuit introduces uncertainty because it is dicult to guarantee a constant current during a pulse.

16.2.2

Reective Triangulated Ranging Sensors

The Sharp GP2D12 sensor is great for measuring distances between 10cm and 90cm. It outputs a voltage that relates to the distance. However, the application of such sensors requires attention to a few details. First, the GP2D12 sensor internally uses modulated (pulsed) IrED. It is important to use a low ESR (equivalent series resistance) 10F resistor to decouple the power supply. Without such a decoupling resistor placed close to the sensor, the main regulated supply can see enough uctuation to trigger a reset. The GP2D12 sensor is not calibrated. In other words, dierent GP2D12 sensors produce slightly dierent voltages for objects at the same distance. An application must be provision to calibrate the sensors. One of the main drawback of the GP2D12 sensor is the long sampling time. Although most inexpensive ADCs need a little bit of time to perform successive approximation, it is the sensor itself that contributes most to the sampling time. The GP2D12 sensor only updates the output every 20ms or so. This means for 20ms, the output voltage remains the same. Worse yet, there is no external line to indicate when the output voltage is updated. This means in software, a robot never knows whether it is reading a freshly updated output, or an output that is just about to be updated. This means the value acquired by the robot can be up to about 40ms old! A moderately fast robot at 300mm/s moves about 12mm in 40ms. This lag also introduces problems for error correction because the information used to determine correction action can be up to 40ms old. There is little you can do about this. You can, at your own risk, try to hack the sensor so you can tell at least when it starts to sample. This helps to reduce the lag to 20ms. You can also adjust your error correction method to perform smaller corrections, or perform corrections at intervals longer than 100ms. For linear uncertainly, you can reduce the speed when you know you are close to a cell in which you need to stop.

78 Spike Filtering

CHAPTER 16. SENSING

The GP2D12 sensor is notorious for its spike noise. This noise is due to the sudden current consumption and release (presumably for the IrED). Low pass ltering helps, but the spikes can still alter the average value suciently. Consequently, a neighbor comparison technique can be used. If a sample is more than a threshold from its two neighbors, then it is replaced by an average of the two neighbors. This threshold should be based on osciloscope observation after the sensor is connected to the ADC circuit. Clustering The GP2D12 sensor only updates its output periodically. This is good and bad. It is good because we can use a low-pass lter during an output period to acquire the most accurate reading. This is bad because it means the response is delayed (by up to 40ms). For accuracy, clustering should be used. But this means that we rst have to nd clusters, and secondly to use the average of a cluster after the cluster is identied. If two clusters are dierent, they are easy to identify. If three samples are signicantly dierent from the previous three samples (threshold is based on noise level), we are already three samples into the new cluster. However, if two clusters are similar, it is not as easy to identify a cluster. The only thing we can do is to use the number of samples to mark the boundary between clusters. Nonetheless, if two clusters are not too dierent, using a xed-window average across the two clusters may be acceptable. Note that the use of clustering means we only trust data after at least one clusters time. In other words, what we measure is at least 40ms stale. This is an inherent problem with the sensor. Clustering does not make the problem worse, but it does make the point more apparent. The basic algorithm of clustering (with spike ltering) is as follows: if (|st st1 | > t) (|st1 st2 | > t) then st1 (st +st2 ) 2 end if if st..t2 is dierent from st3..t5 then add st3..t5 to cluster sum add 3 to number of samples compute value of previous cluster c reset number of samples to 3 add st..t2 to cluster sum trigger action relying on cluster transition else if number of samples exceeds cluster limit then add st5 to cluster circular queue compute running cluster value c trigger action relying on moving average end if Calibration GP2D12 sensors do not come pre-calibrated. This means even though a sensor remains self consistent, two dierence sensors may produce dierent output at the same distance from an object. The sensor itself is based on triangulation. The emitter and the sensor are spaced at a xed distance. When an object is at innity, the reection lands at a spot that is closest to the center of the sensor. This is the 0V point. When an object is closer, the reection lands at a spot that is further out from the center of the sensor.

16.2. USING COMMON SENSOR TYPES

far object

near object

IrED

Linear sensor

1 Let y be the distance, and let V be the voltage. The relationship is approximated as y+a = m V + b. m is determined by the focal length of the sensor and the width of the sensor strip. a is a calibration constant based on the distance between the emitter and sensor. b is a calibration constant that accounts for the placement of the sensor strip.

Computation Although it is possible to work with ADC values directly, it may be necessary to compute the range directly. y = Vm a is the general formula. The division is computation intensive. This is why, even if +b done in integral math, it should still be avoided. When scaled properly, there is no need to perform oating point computation. m can be a large integer. y can be measured in millimeters. This way, there is no need to use oating point numbers. Interpolation Instead of using a function to compute the value, it is also possible to brute force the conversion. ADC sample points can be collected at xed distances for each sensor. The distance of an intermediate ADC value can, then, be approximated by a linear line between the two closest sampled points. Based on the curve of the response of the sensor, this approach may not be too bad. In terms of computation, this approach still requires one division in the interpolation. Given coordinates (x1 , y1 ) and (x2 , y2 ), and a new x3 , y3 = y1 + (y2 y1 ) x3 x1 . The true strength of this approach x2 x1 is that there is no need to model the response function at all. Note that the division can be reduced to shifting. This technique requires the use of powers of 2 between steps of the x values (ADC readings). Taking samples based on xed steps of ADC values is more dicult, but the gain of speed may be worthwhile. The collection of xed ADC steps should be done with the actual ADC device to be deployed. A special interactive calibration program should be written. The minimal interaction requires the following:

one button to advance to the next ADC step (debounced or set a dead time of no interpretation) one blink pattern for under value one blink pattern for over value

CHAPTER 16. SENSING

one blink pattern for dead-on

Due to the noisy nature of the sensor (and the ADC circuit), a xed window of average (after ltering) should be utilized. In addition, it may be advisable to allow a one-count tolerance, especially for ADC values corresponding to further distances.

Chapter 17

High Level AI Algorithm

17.1 What is it?

The high level AI code of a Micromouse guides the robot through a maze. This level of code is not concerned about skew and oset errors, nor the resynchronization of location based on edge transitions. This code tries to gure out what to do next given the known walls.

17.2

The Ideal Algorithm and the Practical Algorithm

The ideal algorithm should take into account the time used for acceleration, deceleration, turning and probability of running into a wall (due to accumulation of errors). Such algorithms do exist. Indeed, to solve a maze given a set of known walls, we simply have to study solutions to solve a state-space search problem. Dijktras algorithm, A* (pronounced A-star), C* all try to solve general state space search problems and nd the optimal solution. Unfortunately, all of the previous mentioned algorithms require quite a bit of memory and processor resources. By giving up a little bit of optimality, we can restrict the problem enough to use a much more ecient algorithm called oodll.

17.3

The Floodll Algorithm

Note that the oodll algorithm only tries to assign a number to each cell (that indicates the distance from a destination). It does not tell the robot what to do next. Once we gure out the distance of each cell from a destination, it is trivial to gure out what to do next.

17.3.1

Basic Theory

The basic theory behind the oodll algorithm is simple. The distance of a cell from another cell is simply the horizontal distance plus the vertical distance bewteen the cells. Of course, this distance does not directly correspond to the amount of time a robot requires to travel between the cells (due to time used for turning, acceleration and deceleration). However, it is close enough to give a mouse a good start. Given this basic assumption, each destination cell has a value of zero because each is at zero distance from a destination. All neighboring cells (not counting diagonal ones) of a destination have values of 1 because they are one cell away from a destination. Similarly, all reachable neighboring cells of cells of value 1 have values of 2 because they are two cells away from a destination. 81

CHAPTER 17. HIGH LEVEL AI ALGORITHM

But what if we dont know the entire conguration of the maze? This is not a problem. If you have not explored a region, we simply assume there is no wall in that region. This means the algorithm is greedy, it always make the most optimistic guess when information is insucient. While this approach may sound silly at rst, it actually is a wise one. This is because the robot will look for the shortest path using this method. The proof is fairly long and complicated, but the basic idea is as follows: If there exists a shorter path than the taken path, the robot would have explored the shorter path to begin with. Therefore, it is not possible for the robot to rst nd a longer path. This claim, however, does not guarantee that the robot will nd the shortest path in the rst pass. This is because the robot may be tricked to take short paths, while each new mapped wall actually reveals the taken path is less than optimal. This claim only says that if there is a shorter path, the algorithm will nd it.

17.3.2

The Algorithm

l=0 s=d t= while s = do while s = do for c s do s=sc for m n(c) do if v(c) is undened then v(m) = l t=t+m end if end for end for end while l =l+1 swap s with t end while In this algorithm, s is a set of cells being processed, while t is a set of cells to be processed in the next iteration. l is the level of cells, or the distance from a destination. d is the initial set of destination cells. n(c) is a set of reachable neighbors of cell c. v(c) is the value assigned to cell c, v(c) is undened for all cells initially.

17.3.3

Implementation

Central to this algorithm is the implementation of sets and cells. A region 6 maze is 16 by 16 cells, which gives a total of 256 cells. The most ecient method to implement a set is 8 bytes, and use one bit to represent one cell. This requires the linearization of the two dimensional cells. Given that a cell is on row r and column c, the easiest linearization is 16r + c. This uniquely assigns a number for each cell in a maze. From the linear bit number, we can compute which byte in a set to retrieve and which bit of it represents the cell. The byte number is simply 16r+c . But this is easy to compute because it really is 8 just 2*r+c/8 in any programming language. Note that the division can be implemented by right shifts. The bit number is also easy to compute, it is simply c % 8 in C. Smart compilers automatically convert this to use bitwise and as in c & 7.

17.3. THE FLOODFILL ALGORITHM

It is useful to dene a structure in C to represent a set. This can be a denition like the following: struct Set { char bytes[NUM_ROW * NUM_COL / 8]; }; Note that now you can pass a struct Set by value if you want to. Otherwise, it is impossible to pass an array by value in C. Once a set is dened, you need to dene ADT (abstrct data type) methods. The following are useful methods:

count counts the number of elements in a set add adds an element to a set remove removes an element from a set find nds the rst available element from a set
It is best to use the linearized number as parameter or returned value for these methods. The remaining task is to delinearize a linear number used to represent a cell. Assuming l is the linearized number, the row number is l/16, whereas the column number is l%16. Again, these operations can be replaced by right shifts and bitwise and.

17.3.4

Map Representation

For maximum RAM eciency, it is best to represent each partition with a bit (1 means a partition exists, 0 means a partition doesnt exist). The program needs two arrays of bits, one to represent horizontal partitions and one to represent vertical partitions. The boundary can be implied. This means there are only 15 columns of vertical walls and 15 rows of horizontal walls. Each column or row has 16 partitions. The total number of bytes required is 21516 , 2 or 60 bytes. Once again, you can linearize the walls. However, the linearization now relies on which direction you want to look from a cell. For example, the east wall of a cell at row r and column c has a linear index of 16c + r in the vertical partition array. The west wall of the same cell has a linear index of 16(c 1) + r in the vertical partition array. The north wall of the same cell has a linear index of 16r + c in the horizontal partition array. The south wall of the same cell has a linear index of 16(r 1) + c in the horizontal partition array. For eciency, you can directly compute the byte number as 2*c + r/8 for the east partition of a cell, and use r % 8 to compute the bit number in that byte. Recall that most compilers are smart enough to use shifts (instead of multiply and divide) and bitwise and (instead of modulus). The boundary partitions are special cases because they are always there. For example, all cells on column 0 have west partitions. If you use the previous equation to computer the linearized bit number of the west wall of a column zero cell, it yields a negative number. It is best to write some subroutines to abstract the handling of partitions. In particular, you can dene two subroutines:

int existWall(int row, int col, int dir) checks if a partition exists at the dir direction of void setWall(int row, int col, int dir, int setClear) sets or clears a wall. If setClear
is non-zero, the subroutine sets a wall. If setClear is zero, the subroutine clears a wall.

a cell on row row and column col. dir enumerates the four directions (0 for north, 1 for east and etc.)

CHAPTER 17. HIGH LEVEL AI ALGORITHM

Once you have these two functions, you can implement the logic to nd reachable neighbors of a cell by checking which direction(s) does/do not have a parition blocking.

Chapter 18

High-Level and Low-Level Software Interface

The design of the interface between high-level code (oodll, mapping, etc.) and low-level code (motion control, etc.) depends greatly on whether a run-time (or real-time) kernel is used. A multithreading kernel enables elegant designs.

18.1

The Necessity

The stepper logic is triggered by the timer. This means it is asynchronous to the rest of the system. We need to keep the execution of the ISRs short, so it is unwise to lump code for mapping, error correction and even oodll in the timer ISR. So the question is, how do we trigger the code to map walls, perform error correction, and determine the next step?

18.2

Basic Stepper Logic

Portions of the stepper logic execute at a high frequency. The frequency division code for velocity and acceleration control executes for each invocation of the timer interrupt. There is little to gain to separate such code from the ISR using a thread interface. On the other hand, the code to move a step (and then to recompute remaining stopping distance and etc.) executes at a much lower frequency. Consequently, such code is a good candidate to be separated from the ISR. Note that there are many sources of frequency division counter overow. Linear velocity, linear acceleration, angular velocity, angular acceleration, left motor velocity and right motor velocity are all frequency division driven. As a result, a queue should be used to track the reason(s) to trigger frequency division counter overow. Also, one overow can potentially lead to the overow of another, the handler thread must loop until the queue is empty. Such a design also requires the queue entries maintain a context of the overow. This is not dicult, because the structures for motion control are self-contained entities that provide sucient context.

18.3

Sensor Reading Logic

At the lowest level, we have interrupt-driven ADC code to collect raw data. Such code trigger a thread that lters raw ADC reading, and convert processed ADC reading into distance (with range of uncertainty). 85

CHAPTER 18. HIGH-LEVEL AND LOW-LEVEL SOFTWARE INTERFACE

Once distance is known, more processing can be done. This information can be used by wall mapping, error correction and etc. Wall mapping logic is triggered based on the current location, so it cannot be triggered by the logic that computes distance. However, the logic that tracks distance changes is triggered by the availability of new distance. This can be based on a combination of time as well as signicant change of ltered raw ADC code. The distance tracking code can trigger other threads based on patterns. A sharp transition can be used to correct parallel oset error. A slow change of side distance can be used to trigger perpendicular error correction.

18.4

High Level Logic

Compared to stepper, certain high level logic are triggered at even lower frequencies with lower priorities.

18.4.1

Mapping

The mapping logic should execute only when the sensors are passing a reliable area to read a wall. The triggering of mapping logic is performed when a linear step is performed.

18.4.2

Floodll

The oodll logic is triggered whenever a new wall is added, and oodll values may be changed. As such, it is triggered by the mapping logic.

18.4.3

Navigation

The navigation logic is triggered based on the current position of the robot, and whether a change is needed. It is triggered when the current course needs to be changed because of the change of oodll values. Consequently, navigation logic is triggered by the completion of oodll computation. Note that navigation logic is also triggered when a motion prole is completed. This means the navigation logic may be triggered directly from the stepping logic.

18.4.4

Error Correction

Error correction logic is triggered by many reasons. When a parallel wall is available, skew and perpendicular oset error correction should be done continuously.

Chapter 19

Grading Policy
This chapter discusses the grading policy for Micromouse teams at U.C. Davis. Obviously, this chapter has no relevance except to students at U.C. Davis.

19.1

Evaluation Method

Your grade depends on your proof of academic performance. This section lists all the proofs that I need for assigning your grade at the end of the spring quarter. Read this carefully so that you understand what will be used for your grade.

19.1.1

Quizzes

(This is new as of 06/23/2004, eective for the academic year immediately following.) Unannounced quizzes will be given throughout the quarters. About 15 minutes are given for each quiz. Sometimes I give quizzes at the beginning of a period, other times I give quizzes at the end of a period. Each quiz will only cover materials already covered in the class, or prerequisite material for the course. Because students in such a class come from dierent background, each quiz will have a variety of question covering dierent elds. Such elds include computer science concepts, programming, electronic circuits, mechanical design and etc. Note that you dont need to know everything to get a full score on a quiz, but you do need to have some expertise in at least one area. Quizzes are individual. In other words, each student must complete his or her quiz. Failure to complete a quiz individually is considered cheating, and the quiz is voided as a result.

19.1.2

Monthly Reports

In the rst week of each month, a group report should be turned in for grading purposes. The main purpose of a report is to let me know of the progress of the project, or there lack of. The following is a list of items that should be in the weekly report.

List of participants: this is a list of the names of the participants. I know this sounds silly, this list
should not change over time anyway. Please only list the members who participated in the project in the reported month. In the past there has been cases of members totally not participating for periods up to an entire semester! the report.

Principle editor/author: this is a list of the names of members who participated in the writing of
87

CHAPTER 19. GRADING POLICY

Executive summary: this is a short paragraph that outlines what happened, pressing issues, short What happened: this section lists, in detail, what happened in the previous month. Of course, only Pressing issues: this section lists pressing issues of the group. Such issues can range from technical Short term plan: this section lists, in detail, what is planned for this month.
group meeting, keep a log of the following information: to personal. For example, if a member refuses to participate, it is a pressing issue. Other examples of pressing issues include technical problems that cannot be solved. term plans (for the following month) and other topics that you think I should know. Keep this short, you have other opportunities to elaborate. include items that relate to the project. It is best to include a small section for each component of the robot. Also, indicate who did what.

Appendix: meeting logs (normally between 4 to 8 of these). For each class meeting and out-of-class

Include a small section for each component of the robot. Be sure to indicate who is assigned to handle which task.

Date/Time: this is obvious, but people often miss this eld. Participants: list the members who participated. Summary: at least one sentence to describe what happened in this meeting. You can expand as much as you want.

19.2

Project Completion Date

(This section is added as of 06/23/2004.) Groups that nish the project early deserves a better grade. Historically, the best groups tend to complete by Picnic Day. 100% of this component is awarded to a group that completes the project by Picnic Day. 50% of this component is awarded to a group that completes the project before the last day of instruction of spring quarter. Of course, there are always special considerations. The following subsections list such considerations.

19.2.1

Group Resources

Each group can have up to ve members. Obviously, a group with ve members can complete the project faster than a group with only two members. Or so it seems. With more members, work can be done in parallel. However, at the same time, more communication is necessary. As a result, the actual time factor is not exactly directly proportional to the number of members. I reserve the right to make necessary adjustments on a group-by-group basis.

19.2.2

Design Complexity

The most basic traditional design requires signicantly less resources compared to a design that attempts to use innovative methods and components. As a result, I reserve the rights to make necessary adjustments when a design is more complex than the traditional design. Note that this factor has to be determined in the rst quarter. I will let you know whether your design is considered complex compared to a traditional design by the end of the rst quarter. It is dicult to estimate and quantify complexity, but I will try to give you some form of numerical guestimate.

19.2.3

Completeness

If a project is not completed by the end of the spring quarter, I reserve the right to assign points based on the completeness of the robot.

19.3. GRADING BY GROUP OR INDIVIDUALLY

19.2.4

Fit and Finish

In the past, many groups that cannot get a good grade attempted to use t and nish to bump up the grade. This does not work. This is an engineering design class, and not automobile manufacturing plant.

19.3

Grading by Group or Individually

By default, all members of a group receive the same grade. Ideally, all members of a team should contribute about evenly to the implementation of the product, and therefore all members should receive the same grade. Unfortunately, as illustrated over and over again, grading by group is not always possible. Sometimes, work done in a group is unevenly distributed and the contributing members request that the non-contributing members be graded dierently and not to inherit the default grade. Other times, team members cannot agree on how the project should progress and split up. This also requires individual grading because there is no single end product for grading purposes.

19.4

Group Grading

Group grading is quite simple. If a micromouse solves the ocial maze on Picnic Day and submits a reasonable report using my guideline, each member of the team earn an A. A C is rewarded to members of teams that produce micromice that solve a maze of my design before the end of Spring quarter. A B is rewarded to members of teams that produce micromice that solve a maze of my design between Picnic Day and the end of Spring quarter. Minor adjustments (A-, B+, B- and C+) are applied based on date of completion. The instructor, I, reserves the right to make adjustments based on factors other than the date of completion (when the micromouse solves a maze) and the quality of the nal report. In the event that a micromouse cannot solve the maze at the end of Spring quarter, the instructor reads the nal report to assign a grade. Other factors, such as diculty of the design and factors out of the control of team members, are considered in the determination of the nal grade. The following subsections list all the components needed for group grading.

19.5

Individual Grading

Upon request of at least one member of a team, the instructor grades each member individually. This is not the preferred method because a functional micromouse requires more than functional individual parts. The integration of parts is an essential but challenging process that can determine the success or failure of a micromouse project. Keep in mind that a C means satisfactory, or that a student fullls the minimum expectations of the class. A B means above average and an A means excellent/exceptional work. As a result, functional individual components that are suciently documented and demonstrated can only warrant a C. In order to get a grade better than a C in individual grading, a member must produce, document and demonstrate more than just a functional component.

CHAPTER 19. GRADING POLICY

Chapter 20

Complexity Index
This chapter explains the complexity index of a robot (or a component of a robot). This is used as an adjustment factor for a project. This chapter is divided into sections by component.

20.1

Generally Speaking

Note that complexity is only use for positive grading adjustment when the complexity is innovative and it has the potential to improve some aspect of the functionality of a Micromouse. Useless and unnecessary complexity does not inuence grading at all. Furthermore, if you are using a non-baseline feature that is provided by a pre-designed manufactured component, the adjustment is lessened. This makes sense because the design part is already done! On the other hand, some adjustment will still be eective for the application of a non-baseline design.

20.2

Drive System

A traditional and simplistic Micromouse use dierentially steered stepper motors directly attached to the wheels. This forms the baseline of the complexity of the drive system.

20.3

Stepper Drive Circuit

The baseline design uses low side switches or H-bridges for unipolar stepper motors and bipolar stepper motors, respectively.

20.4

Wall Sensors

The baseline design uses look down reective sensors.

20.5 20.6 20.7

Voltage Regulation Custom Circuit Custom PCB

CHAPTER 20. COMPLEXITY INDEX

Part V

Assembly

Chapter 21

PCB Related Assembly Techniques

21.1 Tools

In order to assemble (populate or stu) a printed circuit board, you may need many or few tools. It all depends on the design of the circuit board and the quality you expect from the assembly. This section discusses various tools for PCB assembly.

21.1.1

Lighting

Even before we talk about various soldering irons and soldering stations, lets talk about lighting. Lighting is important for most soldering work because bad solder joints cause a lot of problems down the line. It is worth the extra time and eort to set up proper lighting for your soldering or desoldering work in the rst place. Contrary to common belief, you dont have to spend much money to get good lighting. Most desk lamps will do a nice job. I do recommend the use of orescent light (especially the compact type) over incandescent or halogen type. This is because the heat produced for the latter two can lead to discomfort when you need to work close to the PCB. One trick to get a nice bright and cool light source is to use the compact uorescent bulbs with included reectors. These bulbs are intended to replace hot ood lamps and security lights. With these included reectors, you can disassemble the reector of your light, making the light assembly lighter and easier to handle.

21.1.2

Magnication

When are we going to talk about soldering tools? Well, a little later. For through-hole components, bare eyes are sucient for most people. However, since most newer PCBs use surface mount parts to increase density and decrease cost, you will probably encounter surface mount soldering soon anyway. Surface mount components can be very tiny with even smaller leads. Placement and soldering with bare eyes can be impossible. There are two types of magnication that you should consider. First, you may need constant magnication when you solder or desolder. For this purpose, you need a magnier that you can comfortably wear for hours. While you can spend more than US 50 for a high quality hood-type magnier, I nd that the reading glasses and reading clip-on glasses are sucient. Be sure to get the highest amplication factor. Most drug stores carry reading glasses and clip-on attachments of up to +3.0 diopters. The second type of magnication is for examination and diagnosis. For this purpose, you need a high power magnifying glass or loupe. I recommend an 8x or 10x jewelers loupe. A good quality loupe has

CHAPTER 21. PCB RELATED ASSEMBLY TECHNIQUES

less aberration, which is important because a solder bridge between two pins of a high density component can look like aberration! Lit loupes or magnifying glasses is nice, but they are not necessary. If you set up your lighting properly in the rst place, you usually dont need to worry much. Lit loupes are a bit more expensive, and you usually dont get to choose good optics in the rst place.

21.1.3

PCB Cleaning

Why are we not discussing soldering yet? Well, there are more important topics to cover rst. PCB cleaning is critical to the quality of PCB assembly. This is because grease and other impurities contaminate the contact surface between the PCB and a component. The result is either solder not even sticking to one side or a bad solder joint. The solution for general PCB cleaning is just alcohol. However, dont use the drug-store variety. Rubbing alcohol is about 70% alcohol. While this concentration is sucient for killing germs and causing great pain to any wound, it is not useful for removing grease and ux. Instead, go to an electronics supply store (in some cities in California, Frys Electronics) and purchase alcohol that is intended for PCB cleaning. Such alcohol usually has a 90% concentration and not intended for consumption nor skin contact. If you touch it to inhale its vapor in a normal situation, youll probably be okay. Just dont intentionally try to inhale or rub it on yourself. Absolutely dont drink it, though! Although I am cost conscious most of the time, I do not recommend the use of regular bathroom tissue paper or even paper towel for cleaning a PCB. The main reason is because of lint. You can purchase inexpensive lint-free cleaning pads from stores. An acid brush can also be very helpful when you need to clean between component pins. These brushes are inexpensive (US 0.10 or less). Cotton swabs are also useful for mopping up cleaning solution. Keep plenty around your workbench.

21.1.4

Solding Tools

Now we start to talk about soldering tools. Unless you plan to solder wires and contacts (switches and etc.) exclusively, be prepared to invest a little money on a good soldering station. But whats wrong with the inexpensive pencil-style or gun-style soldering tools? The answer is the lack of temperature control. The low power soldering pencils do not have enough heat to ow solder correctly. The result is cold solder joints. Cold solder joints can be the source of many problems to come. The high power soldering guns are too hot for heat sensitive components. Can you guess which components are heat sensitive? It turns out that even pads and traces on the PCB are heat sensitive as well! At 800 F, pads and traces on a PCB can easily lose their adhesive bond to the ber glass material. Lift traces and pads are very time consuming to repair. Even among temperature-controlled soldering stations, there are good ones and bad ones. A good soldering station controls temperature accurately and quickly. In other words, when there is a large heat load, the station quickly converts more energy to heat, but stops immediately when the tip reaches the preset temperature. A bad soldering station, on the other hand, reacts slowly and tends to over shoot. This means a bad soldering station tends to delay reacting to heat loads. This translates to a long time between the tip touching a PCB and a pad eventually heating up. At the same time, the tip temperature over shoots. This means once the tip heats up, it heats up too much and goes beyond the preset temperature. How can you tell whether a soldering station is good or bad? Unfortunately, the answer is not easily available. Through experience and feedback from others, you can trust Metcal soldering stations. Metcal soldering stations use the skin eect of inductance. Temperature control of Metcal soldering stations occurs directly at the tips. The response is quick and accurate. As you can guess by now, Metcal

21.1. TOOLS

soldering stations are not cheap. The least expensive model is US 300. If you shop at auction websites, you can typically get one for US 150 or so. Hakko and Weller soldering stations less than US 200 should be avoided. These soldering stations typically react slowly and over shoot wildly. The manufacturer of Chip-Quik is starting to market their own soldering stations, and these are supposed to be both inexpensive (about US 100 or less) and high quality. Search for the website of Chip Quik and look for their soldering stations.

21.1.5

Soldering Tips

There are many soldering tips available, but you typically dont need more than two. For surface mount work, you need to get a soldering tip with a pointed end. Try to avoid the ones with a long cone. The length of the cone delays temperature feedback and leads to long response time and over shooting. In other words, get a short soldering tip that has a pointed end. Metcal sells soldering tips that are prebent 30 degrees or so. This is a good idea. First, a bent tip makes it easier to access tight space and work under a +3.0 dioptor magnifying glass. This is because a bent tip makes it unnecessary to tilt the soldering pencil itself. Second, a bent tip also makes it easy to knife or slide solder ne pitch leads of surface mount components. More on this topic later. Besides a nd-tipped soldering tip, you may also want to consider getting a standard tip. Most soldering stations come with standard tips already, so you probably dont need to spend any extra money. A standard tip is bigger and more blunt. This type of tips is useful for general-purposed soldering and it is more eective when the amount of heat mass to heat up is large (due to the larger contact area).

21.1.6

Flux

As long as you have PCB grade alcohol, there is no such thing as too much ux (because you can always remove the excess amount). Flux is inexpensive, but it is critical to soldering and desoldering. This is because ux is a chemical that activates solder. Up to a certain point, ux helps to get rid of impurities between two surfaces to be soldered. It also helps solder ow once molten. Properly owing molten solder wicks up most metal like water wicks up tissue paper. You can get the usual ux, which must be washed/cleaned because of its corrosive nature. You can also get no-wash type ux which can be left on a PCB. For low quantity production, it really doesnt matter since washing and cleaning a PCB dont talk much time. Be sure to get ux that is intended for electronics soldering, not copper pipe sweating. The red solution for copper pipe sweating is very corrosive and it can easily damage pads and traces on a PCB. Some people nd vaporized ux pleasant smelling. While this may be the case for you, please refrain from inhaling ux vapor! Not only is this vapor unhealthy by itself, it also contains lead oxide. All lead (elemental or compound) is bad for your body.

21.1.7

Desolding Braids

Desoldering braids are made for desoldering components (hence the name), but they are best used for mopping excess solder on a PCB. Combined with enough ux on a clean PCB, desoldering braids eectively remove excess solder that can otherise short two traces or pads. For surface mount work, get the thinner type so it is easier to get to tight spots.

21.1.8

Desoldering Plungers/Guns

Also called solder suckers, desoldering plungers are spring-loaded pumps. You depress the plunger and lock it in position. Then you position the tip where you need to remove solder. Press a button and the plunger creates the suction to vacuum molten solder.

CHAPTER 21. PCB RELATED ASSEMBLY TECHNIQUES

I have had limited success with these plungers, so I cannot recommend them to you. If you do need to remove through hole components, it is better to use a desoldering gun. There are two types of desoldering guns. The rst type utilizes a continuous pump to create the vacuum necessary to remove solder. While this type of desoldering gun is eective, they are also quite expensive. The best price is about US 170 for a brand new unit. The second type utilizes a solenoid actuated plunger for a one-shot suction every time the button is pushed. This type is less expensive at about US 100 each (brand new). Because there is no continuous suction, a one-shot desoldering gun may seem more dicult to use. In reality, on the other hand, a one-shot desoldering gun is quite easy to operate. The key is to position the tip correctly to make sure it is perpendicular to the PCB. The tip should also be heated properly so solder ows well. As long as the correct angle and temperature is provided, a one-shot desoldering gun is an eective tool for removing through-hole parts.

21.2
21.2.1

PCB Preparation
Partitioning a PCB

21.3 21.4 21.5

Soldering Diagnosis Desoldering

Part VI

Software/Hardware Tools

Chapter 22

AVR Programming Tools

Although there are many available programming tools for the AVR family of processor, I only recommend the use of the Linux-hosted tool set. The main reason is due to the native support of GNU tools. While I do not want to dictate what kind of environment or tools you can use for your projects, I nd it far more eective to ask everyone in the class to use the same OS and the same tool set. If you decide to use an OS or tool chain that diers from my recommendation, you may experience more unexpected problems. I will help you resolve your problems to my best ability, but I will not allocate an unfair amount of time so that other groups suer from your choice of OS or tools.

22.1

Getting Linux

The rst step to set up your development machine is to download and install Linux. You have many choices of Linux, I recommend only one distribution that I can eectively support. I choose the Debian distribution http://www.debian.org because it is relatively easy to setup, and it is a breeze to maintain and update. It also has all the necessary packages for AVR program development. You do not need a brand new PC to install Debian Linux. For what we are doing, you can easily use an older PC (Pentium MMX/II class, about 166MHz to 300MHz, 64MB of SDRAM and about 2GB of hard disk space). I do recommend the use of notebook/laptop computers because you can easily bring your project to the lab and back home. You can often nd a notebook computer that has sucient resources for our project for about US 150 for a P2 class to US 300 for a low-end P3 class (at auction sites or specialized dealers selling refurbished computers). It is best to get a computer with a 100Mbps network port already built-in. This facilitates many network enabled benets that come with Debian Linux (and most generic Linux tools). If your computer has no network port, you can nd brand-new network interface cards (NICs) for less than US 20 in most computer/electronics stores. Frys regularly sells refurbished PCMCIA/cardbus 100Mbps LAN NICs at US 10 each. For best compatibility with Linux, not all brands are equal. Intel chipset-based network cards tend to be easier to deal with. The most popular Intel chipset is the ExpressPro 100. You can nd PCMCIA network cards using this chipset for about US 20 at Frys. The card comes with a dongle, so you must be careful with it (otherwise the dongle connector can easily be damaged!).

22.1.1

VMWare Workstation (non-free)

VMWare is not Linux, but it is a tool that allows you to run Linux as a window in a Win32 environment. Alternatively, it allows you to run Windows in a Linux environment. With student discount, it is about US 150 (last I checked anyway).

101

102

CHAPTER 22. AVR PROGRAMMING TOOLS

The main advantage of VMWare is that you dont need to dual boot. You can remain in the host operating system that you feel comfortable with (for most people, it is Windows). You can use the guest OS only when you need to. You also have access to both OSes at the same time. Copying and pasting across the OSes can be tricky, but the two OSes can share the same le system(s), which makes it easy to transfer les from one OS to another. Another cool thing about VMWare is that the guest OS can be completely shielded. The so called le system for the guest OS can be just a huge le in the host OS. This means the guest OS can never mess up the host OS. VMWare also allows the guest OS share the same network connection to the internet with the host OS. This is very cool because now your guest OS can access the internet resources. I only have experience using Linux as my host OS and Windows 98 as my guest OS. If you want to set up VMWare in the opposite direction, I can only give you a few pointers.

22.1.2

Installing Debian over the Web

This is the best option if you have broadband internet connection. Go to the URL http://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst and click on either a Minimal CD or Floppy Disks. Most people prefer the oppy disks option. As a shortcut, go to the URL http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/disks-i386/current/images1.44/ and download the les of .bin extension. These les are oppy disk images. Most people only need root.bin and rescue.bin, but you may need the driver-?.bin if you have some exotic hardware that is not supported by compiled-in options. Once you have downloaded the oppy disk images, download the DOS utility rawrite2.exe from http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/disks-i386/current/dosutils/rawrite2.exe. This command line utility program allows you to re-create oppy disks based on the .bin les that you just downloaded earlier. Refer to http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/disks-i386/current/dosutils/rawrite2.txt for some documentation. You can also invoke rawrite2 without any parameters to see the included help message. Make sure you label each oppy disk properly. On the target computer, boot with the rescue disk, then it will ask you to insert the root disk. The rest of the process is fairly easy if you follow the instructions at the Debian website. The only tricky part if you are using a notebook computer is the need to set up PCMCIA before you attempt to install the base system.

22.1.3

Dual Booting

If you have a machine with an existing OS that you want to keep, but you still want to install Linux in the remaining space, you need to be more careful. First, you need to make sure there is enough space for Linux. It is best to reserve about 2GB for the main OS/user space, 128MB for the swap le and about 20MB for the boot partition. You need to make sure the boot partition is a physical partition and it is within the rst 1GB of the physical disk (or even closer if you have an earlier BIOS), but the other two partitions can be anywhere, even as logical partitions. If you know that you have enough disk space, but the partitions are not sized/structured correctly, you can use a tool such as Partition Magic (from PowerQuest) to repartition the hard disk. I cannot guarantee the safety of your existing data, so you should back up the drives if there is anything you dont want to lose. This is how I would set up the new partitions: 1. rst physical partition be a 20MB partition for the Linux boot partition, it should be an extension-2 (ext2) type. 2. second physical partition be the boot partition for your other OS. It should contain the system les to start up your other. OS. For most Windows users, this is your C: drive.

22.1. GETTING LINUX 3. make the rest of the partitions an extended partition. 4. reserve 128MB (or more) as the Linux swap partition inside the extended partition 5. reserve 2GB (or more) as the main Linux OS/user partition

103

Until you get the Linux OS setup, set the boot/active ag on the partition containing your other OS. This way, you can still always boot to your other OS. Do not change or do anything to the master boot record (MBR), or you may not be able to boot at all! After following these steps, you can install Debian Linux. Be careful do not let the installer repartition again, just initialize (format) the predesignated partitions and associated them to the correct Linux use. After, I repeat, after, you get Debian Linux installed, you can set up LILO to recognize both the Linux boot partition as well as the other OSs partition. At this point, you can consider setting the Linux boot partition (the small 20MB partition) as the boot/active partition. Again, do not mess with the master boot record, just change the boot/active partition to the Linux boot partition.

22.1.4

Specify Minimal Packages

Because we need to upgrade the whole system to the unstable distribution eventually, dont even bother to install packages that you dont need to get the computer started. This means dont install XWindows, Gnome, KDE and other goodies. This means in the initial set up, dont bother to run tasksel or dselect. Just install the bare minimum, then follow the instructions of the next subsection to upgrade the distribution.

22.1.5

Upgrading to the Unstable Distribution

Once you have the stable distribution installed and running, you can upgrade to the unstable distribution. The main reason to upgrade is to get the latest and greatest tools for AVR related software development. To do this, log in as root. First, edit /etc/apt/sources.list and replace all the stable references to unstable (except for the security entry). Save the le. Then, issue the following commands: apt-get update apt-get dist-upgrade This will bring in the unstable les to replace your stable les. Yes, this is a good thing because youll have the latest updates. After the system is updated to the unstable distribution, you can use dselect to get the optional packages.

22.1.6

Get the Rest of the Packages

dselect is a command-line tool that lets you update and select packages to install. You probably should select the update command once in a while to update your catalog of packages. Use the select command to select packages. For a relatively low-end machine with an 800x600 display, it is relatively pointless to get XWindow, KDE or Gnome. Linux comes with 6 virtual text mode consoles, which is more than sucient for most people. I understand that text mode consoles do not look sexy, but they are just as functional (if not more functional than xterms on a low-res screen!). With a low-res. screen, the only reason why you may want to consider getting XWindow is for viewing PDF les. You dont need Gnome or KDE for this purpose. Just install one of the many windows managers (uxbox, fvwm, twm and etc.).

104

CHAPTER 22. AVR PROGRAMMING TOOLS

By not running XWindow and window managers, you are easily saving 200MB of memory requirement. This is what makes a low-end machine with 64MB of memory (or even less!) practical. You can change the console text mode from 25 lines to 50 lines. by looking up the man pages of consolechars. If you have a fancy screen (1024x768 at least) and enough memory (128MB or more), you can consider installing an GUI on top of Linux. You dont need anything like Gnome or KDE unless you plan to use Linux as your desktop OS (to run oce applications). Unless you have a preference for either KDE or a bare-minimum GUI frontend, I personally recommend installing gnome-core (and related les). This should automatically trigger the inclusion of most GUI tools that you may need.

22.1.7

Get the AVR tools

Use dselect to get the AVR tools, particularly, get binutils-avr, gcc-avr, avr-libc, and uisp. Some of these may be automatically selected or recommended when other packages are selected.

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Micromouse Handbook: Tak Auyeung, Ph.D. June 10, 2005

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Micromouse Handbook: Tak Auyeung, Ph.D. June 10, 2005

Uploaded by

Micromouse Handbook

Tak Auyeung, Ph.D. June 10, 2005

Before Getting Started

2 Timeline 2.1 Backward Timeline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CONTENTS 5.1.3 Wood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Physics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 32 33 33 33 34 34 34 34 35 35 35

Common Robotics Theories

TA 20030911 0838: add change log

0.1. COPYRIGHT NOTICE

Before Getting Started

Who is likely to succeed?

Drive to make it work

Possession of an inquisitive Mind

Ability to stay cool when things seem hopeless

CHAPTER 1. WHO IS LIKELY TO SUCCEED?

End of Spring Break

Mid Winter Quarter

Beginning of Winter Quarter

Beginning of Winter Break

Beginning Fall Quarter

CHAPTER 3. DRIVE SYSTEM

3.5. BALL TRANSFER

Bearing, shaft, etc.

CHAPTER 3. DRIVE SYSTEM

Figure 3.1: Direction Friction Drive

Types of Stepper Motors

A general schematic of stepper motors is shown in gure 3.2.

 2. BD 3. BA 4. DB

How to Choose a Stepper Motor?

CHAPTER 3. DRIVE SYSTEM

Logic Voltage Regulators

CHAPTER 4. ENERGY SYSTEM

4.3. ENERGY CALCULATION

Charging and Discharging

CHAPTER 4. ENERGY SYSTEM

Table 4.1: Battery Chemistry Comparison

6.4 6.5 6.6

I/O Development Tools Support and Repair

Common Robotics Theories

CHAPTER 7. DIFFERENTIAL STEERING

Stepper Motor Control

Assuming a symmetric deceleration, then D =

42 if a > aacc then set a = aacc end if end if

CHAPTER 8. STEPPER MOTOR CONTROL

8.3. EFFICIENT IMPLEMENTATION end if

CHAPTER 8. STEPPER MOTOR CONTROL

Noise Related Problems and Solutions

Sources of Electrical Noise

CHAPTER 9. NOISE RELATED PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

High Current Circuits

The current is switched periodically.

For example, a pulse width modulated heater element that

Methods to Reduce Noise

9.2. METHODS TO REDUCE NOISE Zener/Transient Voltage Suppressor Diodes

CHAPTER 9. NOISE RELATED PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

9.2. METHODS TO REDUCE NOISE

CHAPTER 9. NOISE RELATED PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

The Proportional Term

The Integration Term

CHAPTER 10. PID LOOP

The Derivative Term

From Continuous to Discrete

The main equation is simple, now comes the gritty details.

10.3. PRACTICAL CONCERNS

The Resolution of e(t) and Kp

The Resolution of the Integration Term

The Resolution of the Dierential Term

CHAPTER 10. PID LOOP

Improving Feedback Resolution

General Interrupt Service Routine Philosophy

Asynchronous and Continuous Code Interface

CHAPTER 11. LOGIC INTERFACE

Tools and Materials

CHAPTER 12. PROJECT MANAGEMENT

misc. items: binders for manuals, etc.

Focus on the Tasks

12.4. TASK MANAGEMENT

2. BD 3. BA 4. DB