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OPTICAL MOUSE-BASED ODOMETRY

For the railway search-and-rescue robot RABOTA, a MEng group project.

M. M. W. de Silva (010016293), Dr. C. Trayner (Supervisor), Dr. V. Postoyalko (Assessor)


1. Introduction 4. Conclusion

A search-and-rescue robot known as RABOTA uses The project has been successful in implementing
an adaptation of the technology currently seen in op- a working emulation of the PS/2 protocol on a µC,
tical mice to measure the distance travelled, thereby thereby being able to communicate with an opti-
locating derailed trains inside tunnels. cal mouse and receiving its movement data for later
transmission to the remote controlling terminal for
RABOTA’s system would function by receiving the processing and display.
‘instantaneous’ distance travelled from the Optical
Mouse-based Odometer (OMO). This information is A prototype was designed and finalised as a PCB with
then transmitted to the remote control terminal for ac- on-board ICSP, RS-232/UART, I2C, HD44780 compat-
cumulation after the resultant vector of motion is cal- ible LCD interface and a PCB mount PS/2 header to
culated, to result in the total distance travelled from directly connect an optical mouse.
the starting location.
The OMO was designed and implemented success-
2. Designing the Optical Mouse-based Odometer fully, however there is room for improving the system
in terms of efficiency, accuracy and performance, but
The development of the OMO involved a study of the at the cost of increasing the complexity of the system.
operation of optical mice and the communication pro-
tocols used in communicating with a host computer.

Current optical mouse technology was adapted for


use with the RABOTA by altering the maximum op-
erational height above the tracking surface by the use
of a lens.

The OMO was implemented with a micro-controller


(µC) that emulated a host PS/2 device, thereby mim-
icking a PC, to communicate with an optical mouse.
As illustrated in the flowchart, the OMO would read
the movement information from the mouse and relay
this information back to the remote controlling termi-
nal via the I2C bus (Interconnecting Integrated Cir-
cuits) implemented on RABOTA. Flowchart illustrating overall sensor operation.

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