Created 29 Sep 2004 at 19:39 UTC by ericzayers.

Homepage: http://www.ayershome.org/~eric/robots/linefollower1/

Notes:

This is my first "from scratch" robotics project. It is currently incomplete.

The original idea for this robot was to create a "thomas the tank engine" sized robot that could pull my son's trains by following a hand drawn line.

I learned a lot from this project and intend to finish it.

Materials:

• Run of the mill Infrared Emitter and Detector diodes from Austin Electonics (Local electronics store in Duluth, GA.)
• Microchip PIC 16F876A microcontroller (28 pin)
• ULN2801 Darlington Array
• tinybl serial bootloader
• Surplus Epson Unipolar stepper motors from All Electronics

As of September 2004, the circuitry is complete. The robot can detect a line and control its motors. To finish the project, all I need to do is make a little chassis, drive train, and attach the wheels.

The project is halted on several grounds.

• I got interested in hacking Billy Bass
• The motors are way Way WAY too weak. I built 2 experimental drivetrains to try to compensate for this. There is a quicktime movie on my website of it moving. Be sure to watch it, because whenever I try to demo it live, it rarely works.

Description: A small linefollowing robot built from scratch

This project has the following developers:

• ericzayers is a Lead Developer.