V Hymavathi et al.

/ International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology (IJEST)

DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF

DOUBLE LINE FOLLOWER ROBOT
V HYMAVATHI
Mechanical engineering Department, PVP Siddhartha Institute of Technology,
Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, India
[email protected]

G VIJAY KUMAR

Mechanical engineering Department, PVP Siddhartha Institute of Technology,

Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, India
[email protected]

Abstract:

This paper presents design and implementation of line follower mobile robot. It operates as the name specifies.
It is programmed to follow a dark line on the white background and detect turns (or) deviations and modify the
motors appropriately. The path is sensed by the IR (Infra Red) sensors. Differential steering is used to turn the
robot. In this system each back wheel has a dedicated motor while the front wheel is free to rotate. The
microcontroller controls two DC motors of robot to navigate through its path. The mechanical constructional
design and circuitry interfacing with microcontroller of robot are presented. Several running tests are made on
the robot to verify the capability to follow the line by choosing the correct path and achieve the goal position.

Keywords: Line follower mobile robot; Two-way path; IR sensors; differential drive; microcontroller.

1. Introduction

Now a day’s industries are highly automated for various applications. Line follower robots are used in semi to
fully autonomous plants. In this environment the robot functions as materials carrier to deliver products from
one manufacturing point to another; where rail, conveyer and gantry systems are not a suitable option. The line
follower is a self operating robot that detects and follows a line that is drawn on the floor. The path consists of a
black line on a white surface.

The control system used must be capable of following a line and maneuver the robot to stay on course, while
constantly correcting the wrong moves using feedback mechanism, thus forming a simple yet effective closed
loop System. The mobile robot designed should allow the robot to follow very tight curves. While developing a
mobile robot, it becomes necessary to navigate it freely and dynamically in the work space. With each new
environment or task comes the need for new sensors or manipulators, the human body which is the ultimate
mobile robot has and incredible number of sensors. In order to sense or detect the line which is to be followed,
various sensing schemes can be employed [1] these may vary from low cost circuits to high cost vision systems.
When the sensor senses the line then the signal is sent to the microcontroller which is fixed on PCB (printed
circuit board) and with the help of the programming the wheels are controlled and moved.

The objective of this paper is to present the design and fabrication details of an autonomous mobile robot, which
would be capable of following a given complex path. Generally a line follower robot follows single path drawn
on the floor but in this paper double path is used to analyze the merits and de-merits of this type of path. In the
transportation of large volume parts there is a necessity of big robots and it is difficult to have the wide paths for
the wide sensor arrays. To overcome this difficulty, double line path is used so that sensors can be positioned
only at the extreme ends thus saving cost towards sensor array and cost of making wide path.

ISSN : 0975-5462 Vol. 3 No. 6 June 2011 4946

 V Hymavathi et al. / International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology (IJEST)

Fig. 1. Schematic of Line follower robot

2. Basic principle of line follower robot

The basic principle involved in this is it captures the line position with optical sensors mounted at front end of
the robot. For this a combination of IR LED’s and Photo Transistor called an opto coupler is used. The line
sensing process requires high resolution and high robustness [2]. And it should steer robot to track the line with
any steering mechanism. To achieve this we use two motors governing wheels motion. Below is the block
diagram of the line follower robot, when the sensor sense the path, analog signal is given to the op-amp to
produce 0s and 1s which are then fed to the microcontroller, then the microcontroller decides the next move
according to the program. When both the sensors are indicating low (0) then robot start moving on the black
path, for white if it indicates high (1) then it moves along the path. Microcontroller and driver circuit are used
for the control of motors.
IR SENSOR

RIGHT

OPERATIONAL DC
MICROCONTROLLER
AMPLIFER MOTORS
8051
IR SENSOR

LEFT

Fig. 2. Block diagram of line follower robot

3. Basic design and its requirements

The robot is built with 8051microcontroller, L298D, IR sensors, LM358, platform consisting of a toy car
chassis. It has interfaced sensors at the front for detecting the black tracking tape. The block diagram of the line
follower robot shown in figure 2.It captures the line position with the help of these optical sensors called opto-
couplers mounted at front end of the robot (Each opto-coupler consists of an IR LED and an IR Sensor). When
the sensors detects black surface, output of op-amp (LM358) is low logic and for white surface the output logic

ISSN : 0975-5462 Vol. 3 No. 6 June 2011 4947

 V Hymavathi et al. / International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology (IJEST)

is high. The basic circuit of line follower is shown in figure 3.The distance lie between the two sensors is 4.5cms
(including the sensors it is 6cms). It reports to the microcontroller for accurate control and steering of motors.
Microcontroller 8051 and Motor driver L298D were used to drive the motors. The material used for the test
base, wheels is iron and rubber is mounted on the iron wheels.

Fig. 3. Basic circuit of line follower robot

4. Line follower test base

Experiments are carried out by using the test base that was custom made to suit the purpose. The test base has a
two-wheeled mobile robot with motors, sensors and all are mounted on top as shown in figure 4. The DC motors
are connected under the test base, for powering two wheels of line follower robot; two DC motors are used.
Sensor circuits are arranged at the front of the robot, since there are two paths, two sensor circuits are used at the
front of each wheel. The equipment of micro controller and all the electronic components are connected at the
top (front side) of test base and the battery is held at the back side of the test base (as seen from the front of the
robot). The line follower robot consists of the following basic components: microcontroller, motors, IR sensors
and voltage regulator. A brief description of these components is presented in this section.

Fig. 4. Test base (or) chassis of line follower

ISSN : 0975-5462 Vol. 3 No. 6 June 2011 4948

 V Hymavathi et al. / International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology (IJEST)

4.1 The microcontroller

In this work the microcontroller used is 8051. It is one of the most popular microcontrollers that are used now a
day. Many derivative microcontrollers have since been developed that are based on and compatible with the
8051. Thus, the ability to program on 8051 is an important skill for anyone who plans to develop products that
will take advantage of microcontrollers. 8051 microcontroller is based on fully static CMOS (89C52)
technology controller with 3-level program memory, 32 input/output lines, 3 timers/counters, 8 interrupt
sources, 8K flash memory, and 256 byte on chip RAM.

Fig. 5. Bottom view of test base showing motors

4.2 Motors

Two DC motors are used in this robot as shown in figure 5. Control for the two motors in the system is carried
out by using the L298D, microcontroller, enable and disable the motor excitation elements using the internal H
bridges in the circuit. The motor selected for the LFR is the 6V DC motors. This motor operates at 35 rpm and
current up to 6 amperes (maximum). DC motors are generally bi-directional motors. That is, their direction of
rotation can be changed by just reversing the polarity. But once the motors are fixed, control becomes tricky this
is done using the H-Bridge type of motors. The table resembles the movements of the robot according to the
relay positions (with 0’s and 1’s).

The table 1 shows the logic employed for the movements of the wheels.

Table 1. L298D operation

Movements lrrel lfrel rfrel Rrrel

Forward 1 0 0 1
Reverse 0 1 1 0
Right 1 0 1 0
Left 0 1 0 1
Stop 1 1 1 1

4.3 IR sensor

The digital IR sensor consists of an IR transmitter, IR receiver, and an Op-Amp. Once powered, IR LED
continuously keeps emitting IR light. Hence the IR LED acts as transmitter and the photodiode acts as receiver.
As soon as the IR radiation is reflected back by a surface, it is absorbed by the receiver (photodiode).A standard
op-amp operating in open loop configuration (without any feedback) can be used as a comparator. When the
non-inverting input voltage (V1) is higher than the inverting input voltage (V2), the high gain of the op-amp
causes it to output the most positive voltage, i.e. the output of the op-amp will be high (1). When the non-
inverting input voltage (V1) drops below the inverting input voltage (V2), the op-amp outputs the most negative
voltage, i.e. the output of the op-amp will be low (0).

ISSN : 0975-5462 Vol. 3 No. 6 June 2011 4949

 V Hymavathi et al. / International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology (IJEST)

Fig. 6. IR sensors

4.4 voltage regulator

7805 voltage regulator is used as voltage regulator in this line follower. This is applied to maintain constant
output voltage. Generally it consists of 3 terminals one input one out put terminals and another one is ground
terminal. The output terminal is then connected to the power supply pin of the microcontroller. It looks like a
transistor but it is actually an integrated circuit with 3 legs. It can take a higher, crappy DC voltage and turn it
into a nice, smooth 5 volts DC.

Fig. 7. Voltage regulator

5. Programming description

To implement this section of prototype, a microcontroller 8051 was used, because of its simplicity for
programming purposes, the program achieve two sensor monitoring and direct current motor control. The
microcontroller is good situated for such a task, even still can be expanded if a more complex implementation is
required for some other application. Different experiments showed there was a problem when very close curves
where in the robot pathway, so adjusting the pathway fixed this problem and the line follower system showed
good performance for all pathways in the experiments, methodology analysis for sensors and prototype reaction
was done. Programming can be clearly shown in the flow chart below.

ISSN : 0975-5462 Vol. 3 No. 6 June 2011 4950

 V Hymavathi et al. / International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology (IJEST)

6. Tests and results

After the selection of ranges for components of the line follower robot the circuits are constructed and all the
components are assembled on the test base. Sensors were carefully placed and those are arranged at a distance of
4.5 cms between them. And the sensors are at 4mm height from ground. Several running tests are made to verify
the capability of the robot to follow the line, analyze bifurcations, choose the correct path and achieve the goal
position.

6.1 Test run 1

First test run is performed on a simple rectangular path to view the navigation at the bends; after the test is
completed robot satisfactory followed the path smoothly at the bends as shown in the figure 8.

Fig. 8. Rectangular path of line follower robot

ISSN : 0975-5462 Vol. 3 No. 6 June 2011 4951

 V Hymavathi et al. / International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology (IJEST)

6.2 Test run 2

Next the test run is performed on the s- type of path, , here when the robot has performed well to follow the path
by continuously changing its direction as shown in figure 9.

Fig. 9. S-type of path

6.3 Test run 3

The third test run performed in this paper is zigzag type of path, this is complex path which involves both curves
and lines are combined serially and the robot followed the complete path without any stops in the middle.

Fig. 10. Zigzag path

7. Conclusion

This project was a great challenge which allowed mobile robot to be navigated through complex paths. The
design techniques of digital circuits, as well as the logic governing the robot motion when following a line and
selecting the correct path at bifurcations is presented. The electronic circuits and boards were constructed, tested
and mounted on the robot. Logic circuit and the power circuit were integrated by isolating electrical grounds.
Implementation and test results showed that this approach can be efficiently employed in designing the line
follower mobile robot.

ISSN : 0975-5462 Vol. 3 No. 6 June 2011 4952

 V Hymavathi et al. / International Journal of Engineering Science and Technology (IJEST)

8. References

[1] Aziz, A.R.A., Designing and Constructing an Automatic Steering Vehicle (AGV), in Dept of Electrical Engineering. 2004, University
Tenaga Nasional: Malaysia. p. 50.
[2] Roman Osorio C., José A. Romero, Mario Peña C., Ismael López-Juárez ,Intelligent Line Follower Mini-Robot System., 2006
[3] http://www.micahcarrick.com/05-27-2006/failurebot-line-following-robot.html\
[4] Priyank Patil., line follower robot, in Department of Information Technology, K. J. Somaiya College of Engineering Mumbai, India
[5] “8051 Architecture,” http://www.atmel.com/products/8051/.
[6] Patrick Lin.., George Bekey., Keith Abney., M.A., “Autonomous Military Robotics, Risk, Ethics, and Design”, 2008.
[7] Wikipedia,. Mobile robots, 2008.
[8] Cao Quoc Huy .,., line follower robot. , University UPG din Ploiesti, nr 39 Bld Bucuresti, Ploiesti.
[9] Amalia F., Foka .,and Panos E.. Trahanias, Predictive Autonomous Robot Navigation, 2002

ISSN : 0975-5462 Vol. 3 No. 6 June 2011 4953