Indore diary [7] : Robot was my life (Part 3)

We went to Bhopal and from there we boarded on a train for Nagpur. From Nagpur we boarded a train for Kharagpur , Durg was one of the intermediate station. At Durg station we got chance to meet mother, brother and some friends of Bhupendra. Her mother brought lunch for us. We enjoyed homemade food while travelling. Food was delicious especially Gajar ka Halwa and one could not expect such kind of lunch while travelling. Travelling with friends is always a wonderful experience. We enjoyed our train journey to Kharagpur.  

In early morning of 27 Jan,2012, we reached at Kharagpur. We hired an auto ricksaw and we finally reached our destination i.e. IIT Khragpur. There we could see so many people like us. Hoardings and posters were around every corner. After registration, we came to know that first round of our competition will be in afternoon around 2 PM. So we had chance and time to improve our robots and also we really needed that. Because we didn’t know whether the slave robot would run or still behave like confused child. There was place for parking at ground floor and at that time that place was looking like workshop. Participants of various robotic competitions were engaged with their robots. We got chance to see various type of robots and how same idea can be implemented in various creative ways. We also found place for ourselves. 

We arrange our setup there. Then we encountered our first problem of the day, we found that we were unable to reprogram microcontroller used in master robot. We look for every possible reason but all was vain. We got stuck in a problem about which we never thought of. Suddenly we found that a wire lose its contact although it was looking fine. So finally we were able to reprogram microcontroller. But the main problem related to slave robot was still challenging us. We tried to use wireless communication between master and slave robot. We tried so much time but the results were much below the required result. Finally we surrender and decided to use wired communication (allowed in competition). We thought this would definitely work fine. But the results were much below the expectations. Now the only option was to try to improve the performance.

Meanwhile, the watch indicates that the time of first round was near. But due to some reason the some delay of two hours was announced there. Now we had some more time to try our luck. Competitions started at scheduled time. But it was already 4-5 PM of evening. Time was passing with every minute. We were still trying and there was not much improvement. Evening passed and sun went his home with promise to come in morning. Time was passing with every second. We got to know that our turn may at 11 at night. We were still messing with robots. At 10-10.30, we came to know that our turn may come at 12. At 11.30, we requested to shift our turn further after few more participants. We wanted to try our best. Around 3-4 AM in morning, our robots got chance to show their abilities. It was near to okay. After competition, we slept at same place where we were trying our luck with robots, we were so much tired and we didn’t have energy to go room that was allotted to us.

3D street painting

Next morning, results were not in our favors. We failed to qualify for second round. Now we had time to attend lecture, demos and various competitions. We also visited kharagpur town. We attended fire and dance show along with lectures by Naseeruddin Shah and Prabhu Chawla.

Although we failed to win the competition but at least we tried and at least I can say that once “Robot was my life.”

Indore diary [6] : Robot was my life (Part 2)

For Part1: Click here

Only few days were left and in those few days it was require to integrating all sections, to test the robot and to solve any error. As we already tested all the sections separately it seems easy. But the real challenge to build robot was just started. We decided to change the material used to build body of robot from wood to poly sheet. Because the body made from wood was somewhat heavy. It was better to have less weight. For almost two days I along with Krishna queried in almost every shop of SIYAGANJ market and few other shops for poly sheet. But all was vain. After two days, while asking for poly sheet we came to know that poly sheet is used in advertisement industry. Then we concentrated on advertisement agencies only and after some efforts we got poly sheet.

We wanted to work after the department close its doors. So we chose Krishna’s room in hostel as our lab because it was nearest to department. At that time Amar was preparing for GATE. Initially we had planned to use one sided PCB to implement circuits but Krishna insisted to use zero PCB (general PCB). One advantage of using zero PCB is that any connection can be change easily while in other case it is requiring to redesign the PCB. So after some debate all agree for zero PCB. Then we started to implement circuits on PCB.

Mechanical design of robot. (Thanks to NIVEA)

During those days we worked from morning to late night. We usually sleep for four-five hours. Tube light remains ON for 24 hour, as at least one person was there who still working or completed his sleep. During those days I went my room just to take bath and change clothes in morning and to take dinner in night. Rest of time I found myself at department or at Krishna’s room. During late nights, hostel had deserted look but CHUNNU and MUNNU were always there for us. They also refuse to sleep until we went to bed. Selfless service of both brothers indirectly motivate us to keep continue our work. CHUNNU and MUNNU are two speakers’ manufactures by lenevo (for us). They are still inspiring me. Chunnu – munnu, you are great and melodious.

CHUNNU-MUNNU doing their work during late night

In few days we made circuits on PCB and also made body of robots on own. We also made test path on paper so that we could test the accuracy of our robot to follow path. Our strategy was to first build a line follower robot and then slave robot. So it was time to integrate them all. After the integration, we had first prototype of our robot. We were exited to test our robot. We were praying that everything should be fine because the main task is to build another robot to which line follower robot send information regarding the path it is following and another robot follow same path based on this information.

When we tried our robot with test path, we found that line follower robot was not following path accurately. This makes us little disappointed but at least we had something to test. After some spying on robot while it was following the path, we came to conclusion that there must be problem in our algorithm. I advised that everybody made his own algorithm and let us see which algorithm will work. We maintained this throughout our project. Everybody tried but the result was not satisfactory. So we decided to change the position of sensors and increased the number of sensors. This required to again designing the sensor circuitry and it took some more sleepless nights. 

Robots enjoying each other's company

After we had line follower robot with new sensor design, we again tested our robot. This time, results were better than previous time but not so much accurate. So we decided to improve our algorithm to such extent that we got satisfactory result. But at the same time calendar was changing dates and we really needed to worry about deadline. After discussions and debates, we had algorithm which gave us performance above average. Suddenly we realized that we had only less than day to think about another slave robot. Although we had body of both robots, so we need to worry about the body of slave robot. We tested both robots with wireless communication between them. The result was very disappointed for us, it seem like nothing was happening. While master robot (line follower robot) was following the path, slave robot was watching like a child towards master robot and waiting for instructions. With hope in mind that something good will happen, we leaved for IIT Khadagpur…

[To be concluded..]

Indore diary [5] : Robot was my life (Part 1)

Every action has a cause. Different people doing same action may have different-different cause. As far as the my reason of pursuing M Tech is concern, it was more related to acquire certain skills so that I can use them in order to achieve my goal than to got a postgraduate degree. I wanted to be a good designer of microcontroller based system. During my first semester I along with classmate cum friend (Bhupendra) decided to make a microcontroller based project. After few days I came to know about “Kshitij” annual technical festival of IIT khadagpur which was going to organize on last week of January 2012. There was few robotic competitions were also going to organize. I found one of them suitable for us according to our knowledge level and current skills. The problem was to build a line follower robot and another robot which follows the same path as follows by line follower robot. Both wired and wireless communication was allowed between robots. Name of the competition was STALK which was compatible with given problem.

I want to research on the line follower robot and for this I downloaded so many related IEEE paper. For the first time I know that line follower robot can be implement many different techniques like image processing technique, through PID control or by using different types of sensor. I read almost all of them and analyze with respect to our problem. We decided to use Omniwheel and reflective optical sensor (CNY70). Instead of differential drive technique used in most of line follower robot, we decided to use new type of drive technique using omniwheel. Omniwheel was used to increase the DoF (degree of freedom) of robot. After initial theoretical work had completed, we made initial circuit diagram of different section of robot. Now it was time to jump from theoretical world to practical things. So we purchase few things from shop like stepper motor, wireless receiver and transmitter and dc motor. We wanted to check circuits on bread board before we implement on PCB. There were mainly four sections of our lovely robot:

1.      DC motor control

2.      Sensor circuitry

3.      Wireless transmitter and receiver

4.      Stepper motor control

So we started our work in Electronics Lab (thanks to Vasanti ma’am) on bread board. We bunked few lectures and during free time we rushed to electronics lab for some days. Except dc motor control sections no circuit work fine in one try. We needed to change the values of resistance and after investing so much time and efforts; we found that everybody was working fine except the stepper motor. Initially we wanted to control stepper motor and did not get any success. Later we changed our strategy and were trying that at least stepper motor move a bit. But stepper motor swore to not move a bit. After some mischievous experiment finally stepper motor was agree to move a bit but not every time. It was as reliable as street dog, may be dog will run after you or not. We got stuck in this problem. 

A project made by Rajkamal sir (www.rajkamal.org) now in dust at Electronics Lab. 

We tried for many days but still didn’t able to catch any ray of hope. We were frustrated and disappointed towards the future of robot. First semester examination was near and hence we started to give less time to robot. But I was still hope for something good. After examination, it was time to go home. At home, even if we were not sure about the future of robot but we decided to make body of robots.  Under the sun of uncertainty, with the help of some skill people I had body of robots in few days. After few days I again found myself in Indore and it was starting of next semester. We again tried but result was same and unpredictable.

During those days I could smell the news of our robot in the air of department still its future was quite uncertain. Krishna was also willing to join and along with Devendra, we were now team of four. Krishna was lucky fellow for all of us. He had previous experience of working with stepper motor and he solved our problem up to significant extent. But still all was not well…

[To be concluded...]

For Part 2: Click Here

The curious case of mobile phone..

Ancient Chinese ruler built wall around their vast empire also known as Great Wall of China, so that invaders could not be enter their empire easily. In case there was any war commence at wall, soldiers at near tower along wall sent smoke signal by burning wolf dung and fat. When soldiers at next tower saw smoke they also did same and in few hours’ information sent to capital that war is commence at wall.

Now the time has change and due to impressive scientific development there is no need to send any smoke signal or anything like that. Towers are replaced by mobile phone towers and smoke is replaced by electromagnetic waves. Heights of these towers are far greater than height of the roof of the home and they make to believe that there are no walls between people. As the information technology is developing, the virtual distance between people is decreasing irrespective of their physical distance. Mobile phone is one of the innovative and revolutionary solutions to communicate between people. Due to its mobility and accessibility among mass of people, it has significant social impact.

Probably, In Ramayana Raja Dashrath did not die that way if he and Lord Ram had mobile phones. Father and son could talk to each other whenever they want and it did not cause much emotional impact on Raja Dashrath. Nowadays also sons and daughters are leaving home but for higher education. Imagine the case if there are no mobile phones, life will be tougher for such parents and also for the students who are leaving their home first time in their life. Mobile phone is their son and/or daughter for their parents while they are studying away from home.

A song from movie PATANGA(1949) “mere piya gaye Rangoon, kiya hai waha se telephoon…” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAwCZMKItMM) was much ahead from the invention of the mobile phones but this song had given the glimpse of the future. People like to hear commentary of cricket match on radio when they cannot see the match. Similarly some people giving commentary of whatever happening in their life to someone special, day and night. I know I am wrong; it should be day to night, not day and night. It looks like a madness from outside and I don’t know from inside because I was [or am] never inside. People use mobile phone to maintain their special relationship healthy. Mobile phone becomes one of their body parts like finger. And that’s why they love their mobile more them themselves. They will not allow you to even touch it and obviously you will require pass code to access their mobile. Here ‘You’ stands for people like me.

Although mobile phones provide an easy and quick way to communicate but sometime due to excessive use it produces some negative effect. Some people become addicted of mobile and they start to cut off from surrounding environment and people. This makes them less social and they started to think about the things that are not happen in front of him/her. So a technology which make people more social, have reverse effect on them. You can easily make someone fool by telling lie on mobile and some selfish people often do it for own benefit. There are also some adverse health effects like carpal tunnel syndrome due to excessive use of mobile phone keypad.

Finally an interesting fact: India has more mobile phones than toilets. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/7593567/India-has-more-mobile-phones-than-toilets-UN-report.html)