RFID-based Autonomous Mobile Car

Jen-Hao Teng Kuo-Yi Hsiao Shang-Wen Luan Member IEEE Department of Electrical Engineering, I-Shou University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Abstract: Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system is looked upon as one of the top ten important technologies in the 20th century. Industrial automation application is one of the key issues in developing RFID. Therefore, this paper designs and implements a RFID-based autonomous mobile car for more extensively application of RFID systems. The microcontroller of Microchip PIC18F4550 is used to control the autonomous mobile car and to communicate with RFID reader. By storing the moving control commands such as turn right, turn left, speed up and speed down etc. into the RFID tags beforehand and sticking the tags on the tracks, the autonomous mobile car can then read the moving control commands from the tags and accomplish the proper actions. Due to the convenience and non-contact characteristic of RFID systems, the proposed mobile car has great potential to be used for industrial automation, goods transportation, data transmission, and unmanned medical nursing etc. in the future. Experimental results demonstrate the validity of the proposed mobile car. Keywords: Radio Frequency Identification, Industrial Automation, Autonomous Mobile Car, RFID Reader, RFID Tag

Rong-Ceng Leou*
*

Shun-Yu Chan*

Department of Electrical Engineering, Cheng-Shiu University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

and half-active type, respectively. An active tag uses its internal power source to supply energy without the need of acquiring power from RFID reader to initialize. Since it can actively transmit signal, the identifiable distance can reach as far as some ten meters, and one hundred meters even more. Whereas, the limited life cycle and the higher cost are its disadvantages. Passive tag is not equipped with independent power and employs the electromagnetic energy transmitted by RFID reader to initialize its functions. It possesses the features of light weight, small size, long life, as well as low cost. The expiry date of passive tag is indefinite, thus meeting the requirements of the applications needing frequent and repeated writing/reading and being suitable for permanent data storage. The major drawback of passive type is, of course, the short identifiable distance. The applications of RFID systems include apparatus management, procedure control, personnel access control, electronic money pocket, electronic toll collection system, smart card, and industrial automation and so on [1-17]. Undoubtedly, industrial automation application is one of the key issues in developing RFID. The utilization of RFID technology is novel and might enhance the existed automation system. A RFID-based autonomous mobile car is designed and implemented in this paper for more extensively application of RFID systems. The microcontroller of Microchip PIC18F4550 is used to control the proposed autonomous mobile car and to communicate with RFID reader. Due to the uniqueness of RFID tag, the moving control commands such as turn right, turn left, speed up and speed down etc. can be written into the RFID tags beforehand and the tags are then stuck on the tracks. The autonomous mobile car can read the moving control commands from the tags and accomplish the proper actions. With this novel usage of RFID in industrial automation may, expectedly, lead to the wide and far-reaching adoption of every area. Experimental results demonstrate the validity of the proposed system. II. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE Fig. 1 shows the hardware architecture of the proposed autonomous mobile car. The proposed car can be divided into four parts. 1) the RFID tags stuck on the tracks; 2) the RFID reader used to communicate with RFID tags and transmit the moving control commands to Micro Controllable Unit, (MCU) module; 3) the MCU module used to receive the moving control commands from RFID reader and control the mobile car; and 4) the mobile car. Passive RFID tags are used in this paper. The data transfer between passive RFID tag and

I. INTRODUCTION Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system is looked upon as one of the top ten important technologies in the 20th century. According to the investigation of the AMR Research, the willingness for using RFID tags exceeds 85% based on 500 USA enterprises. Over two-thirds of the investigated enterprises are being on the stage of planning, implementing, evaluating, and utilizing of RFID systems. According to the investigation, RFID is likely to become the main stream of the market in foreseeing years. Forrester predicted that there will be over 400 billion commodities labeled with RFID tags before 2010. The report of IDC published in 2004 shown that, the retailed providing chain of USA, due to much more involving and sophisticated, the market scale of RFID rapidly increases from USD 9.1 billion in 2003 to USD 130 billion in 2008. Thus, peoples call it the second IT revolution to describe the potential and development of RFID technology. The derived commercial opportunity is uncountable and boundless. In the upcoming years, the emphasis of RFID development should be put on the fields such as, the leading applications in public areas, the participation of RFID standards community, the construction of core technology, the education and training of R&D workforces, the development of new products, and the set-up of the basic research energy, etc [1-5]. RFID system is composed of two main parts: electronic tag and reader. According to the energized ways of tags, there are three categories of RFID, the active type, passive type,

RFID reader is shown in Fig. 2 and can be divided into the following four steps: 1) the RFID reader broadcasts electromagnetic signal to tag; 2) antenna in the tag receives the signal from the reader and stores charge in a capacitor; 3) when the capacitor has built up enough energy, it releases it over time to the tag's coils and 4) the tags coils release an encoded radio wave containing the moving control commands in the tag, which the reader then demodulates. The 13.56 MHz ISO15693 mode tags and electronic reader are used in the experiments. The RFID tags in use possess (64 pages x 4 bytes) memory capacity. One tag can store the moving control commands of several cars; therefore, different cars can move in different paths according to moving control commands stored in and received from the tags. After the moving control commands were received by RFID reader, the commands will then be sent to MCU by UART. MCU will deal with those commands and control the mobile car to turn left, turn right, speed up or speed down and so on through the I/O ports and Pulse Width Modulation (PWM).

Fig. 2.

Data Transfer between RFID Tag and Reader

The MCU PIC18F4550 features configurable unified 2k bytes internal RAM, I2C serial interface, UART, timers, programmable I/O ports, 10-bit Analog to Digital Conversion (ADC) and 16-bit high-resolution PWM etc [18]; therefore, the MCU is suitable for industrial automation applications. Fig. 3 shows the concepts of the proposed autonomous mobile car. From Fig. 3, it can be seen that the tags are stuck on the tracks and the car will move depending on the commands received from the tags. For example, while the car moves to tag 1 and receives the commands of turn left and speed up, then the MCU will make some control actions to let the car conform the commands. While the car moves to tag 2, the commands of go straight and slow down were received, the MCU will once again make some control actions to let the car conform the commands. Therefore, the car will then move in moving path 1 automatically. Of course, the car can also move in the other paths according to the commands received from tags. Fig. 4 shows the physical hardware of the proposed RFID-based autonomous mobile car.

Fig. 1. Hardware Architecture of the Proposed Autonomous Mobile Car

Fig. 3: Concepts of RFID-based Autonomous Mobile Car

Fig. 5. Driving Circuit for the Motor Control of the Proposed Autonomous Mobile Car

Fig. 4. Physical Hardware of the Proposed Car

and motor control procedure. The flowchart of tag data processing procedure is shown in Fig. 7. From Fig. 7, it can be clearly observed that MCU will transmit the request command to tags and then received control commands from tags periodically. The control commands should include the moving forward/backward, direction and speed etc. If the commands have been received completely, the commands will be further transmitted from RFID reader to MCU. Fig. 8 shows the flowchart of motor control procedure. From Fig. 8, it can be seen that after the MCU received the control commands from RFID reader, the MCU will calculate and then send the PWM signals through the control signals 1-4 to motors; and therefore, the car will move according to the signals. A PI-based feedback control method is used in this paper to make sure that the required moving path can be achieved.

III. FIRMWARE FOR THE PROPOSED CAR Due to limited budget, a simple and cheap motor is used in the proposed autonomous mobile car. Of course, a high precise motor can also be integrated into the proposed car to achieve more advanced and accurate control without modifying the architecture represented in this paper. Two motors are used in the proposed car for direction and speed controls, respectively. Fig. 5 shows the driving circuit used in the motor control of the proposed autonomous mobile car. From Fig. 5, it can be seen that two control signal generated by MCU are used to control one motor. For direction control, the control signals 1 and 2 are used to control the car to turn left and turn right, respectively. For speed control, the control signals 3 and 4 (not shown in Fig. 5) are used to control the car to move forward or speed up and move backward or speed down, respectively. The firmware programmed in MCU PIC18F4550 is designed to communicate with RFID tags and control the motors according the commands received from the tags. Therefore, the main firmware programmed as shown in Fig. 6 can be divided into two parts; tag data processing procedure
Fig. 6. Flowchart of Firmware Programmed for the Proposed Car

The RFID tags in use possess (64 pages x 4 bytes) memory capacity. The paper only employs (5 pages x 4 bytes)

to control moving path of one car; therefore, the control commands of 12 cars can be planned and stored in the tags. Its detailed allocation is listed in Table I. Of course, more accurate control commands can also be planned; for example, more divisions for direction and speed control such as turn 10 deg. left with speed 10 cm/s etc. can be planned and stored in tags to control the car.

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS A RFID-based autonomous mobile car was designed and implemented in this paper. Several moving paths have been planned and tested; however, only three cases are shown here. Three tags are used to control the car with respect to the three cases, respectively. The control commands of each tag are shown in Table II. Fig. 9 shows the physical moving example of the proposed autonomous mobile car.
Table II Control Commands for Three Test Cases Tag 1 Tag 2 Tag 3 1 1 1 0: turn left 0: turn left 1: turn right 0: forward 0: forward 0: forward 0: 15 cm/s 1: 30 cm/s 2: 50 cm/s 75 cm 120 cm 175 cm

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Fig. 7. Flowchart of tag Data Processing Procedure

Fig. 9. Moving Example of the Proposed Autonomous Mobile Car

5 cycles in speed 15 cm/s

Fig. 8. Flowchart of Motor Control Procedure Table I Data Allocations in RFID Tag Data Car type Direction (0: turn left, 1: turn right) Moving forward/ backward (0: forward, 1:backward) Speed: (0: 15 cm/s, 1: 30 cm/s, 50 cm/s) Moving distance (cm)

Volt/div 5.00V Time/div 1.00s (a) Waveforms of Control Signals

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(b) Control Commands Displayed on LCD Fig. 10. Waveforms and Control Commands for Test Case 1

test cases 2 and 3 as shown in Figs. 11 and 12 also shown that the proposed car can move according to the control commands received from the tags. Therefore the validity of the proposed system can be demonstrated.
4 cycles in speed 30 cm/s

V. CONCLUSIONS RFID system is looked upon as one of the top ten important technologies in the 20th century. Undoubtedly, the industrial automation application is one of the key issues in developing RFID. The utilization of RFID technology is novel and might enhance the existed automation system. A RFID-based autonomous mobile car was successfully designed and implemented in this paper. By writing the moving control commands into the RFID tags beforehand and sticking the tags on the tracks, the autonomous mobile car can then read the moving commands from tags and accomplish the proper actions. Experimental results demonstrated the validity of the proposed system. Some more comprehensive and advanced control methods and their corresponding control commands can also be designed and stored in tags and then used to control the car accurately, the research will be investigated in the future. REFERENCES
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Volt/div 5.00V Time/div 1.00s (a) Waveforms of Control Signals

(b) Control Commands Displayed on LCD Fig. 11. Waveforms and Control Commands for Test Case 2

3.5 cycles in speed 50 cm/s

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Volt/div 5.00V Time/div 1.00s (a) Waveforms of Control Signals

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[11] (b) Control Commands Displayed on LCD Fig. 11. Waveforms and Control Commands for Test Case 3

The initial conditions for the car are moving forward in speed 30 cm/s. The waveforms of control signals for motors and the control commands received from tags and displayed on LCD are shown in Figs. 10, 11, and 12 for the three test cases, respectively. The upper and lower waveforms are the control signal for direction and speed controls, respectively. As shown in Fig. 10, the control commands of the first case are speed 15 cm/s and moving distance 75 cm; therefore, it spent five cycles to move 75 cm in the speed 15 cm/s. The

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