CHAPTER 2: WORKING OF THE PROJECT

2.1: W
Surveillance robot is to recognize and detect motion automatically around a robot's
environment. The robot design has been partitioned into sensor, control, and planning
subsystems. Robotic surveillance appliance is built on a moving platform designed for
surveillance and security tasks. This robot can be operated in remote eyes or automatic
trip modes. This means it can be steered remotely by a human watchman as a moving
surveillance camera or it can drive autonomously along an undefined route, detecting all
inconsistencies in the video input. Secret surveillance in tightly constrained spaces is
demanded in many military and civilian activities, such as cave-in enemy raids and indoor
hostage rescue missions.
These special applications require a kind of miniature mobile robot to function covertly in
highly confined environments. In our approach, moving targets can be detected by the robot
using motion detection sensor and wireless camera. To adapt to different lighting conditions,
the target model is updated regularly based on an update mechanism.
To ensure robust tracking, the robot detects abnormal human behaviour by tracking the upper
body of a person. To lower the false alarms by motion detection system, gas detector, fire
sensor, metal detector directs the robot to the scene where events occur and the robot can
employ its camera to further confirm the occurrence of the events.
General block diagram

DC Motor:
Whenever a robotics hobbyist talk about making a robot, the first thing comes to his mind is
making the robot move on the ground. And there are always two options in front of the
designer whether to use a DC motor or a stepper motor. When it comes to speed, weight, size,
cost... DC motors are always preferred over stepper motors. There are many things which you
can do with your DC motor when interfaced with a microcontroller. For example you can
control the speed of motor, you can control the direction of rotation, you can also do
encoding of the rotation made by DC motor i.e. keeping track of how many turns are made by
your motors etc. So you can see DC motors are no less than a stepper motor.
Usually H-bridge is preferred way of interfacing a DC motor. These days many IC
manufacturers have H-bridge motor drivers available in the market like L293D is most used
H-Bridge driver IC. H-bridge can also be made with the help of transistors and MOSFETs
etc. rather of being cheap, they only increase the size of the design board, which is sometimes
not required so using a small 16 pin IC is preferred for this purpose.
Differential drive:

By using two motors we can move our robot in any direction. This steering mechanism of
robot is called as differential drive.

Lets check how it works

Left Motor

Right Motor

Robot Movement

Straight
Stop
Reverse
Straight
Straight
Reverse

Straight
Straight
Straight
Stop
Reverse
Reverse

Straight
Left
Sharp left
Right
Sharp right
Reverse

The term 'differential' means that robot turning speed is determined by the speed difference
between both wheels, each on either side of your robot. For example: keep the left wheel still
and rotate the right wheel forward, and the robot will turn left. If you are clever with it, or
use PID control, you can get interesting curved paths just by varying the speeds of both
wheels over time. Dont want to turn? As long as both wheels go at the same speed, the robot

does not turn - only going forward or reverse.

fig

To construct a simple model of the constraints that arise from the differential drive, only the
distance

between the two wheels, and the wheel radius , are necessary. See figure 13.2b.

The action vector

directly specifies the two angular wheel velocities (e.g., in

radians per second). Consider how the robot moves as different actions are applied. See
Figure 13.3. If

, then the robot moves forward in the direction that the wheels

are pointing. The speed is proportional to . In general, if

travelled over a duration
the wheels). If

of time is

(because

, then the distance

is the total angular displacement of

, then the robot rotates clockwise because the wheels are

turning in opposite directions. This motivates the placement of the body-frame origin at the
centre of the axle between the wheels. By this assignment, no translation occurs if the wheels
rotate at the same rate but in opposite directions.
Based on these observations, the configuration transition equation is

(13.16)

The translational part contains

and

parts, just like the simple car because the

differential drive moves in the direction that its drive wheels are pointing. The translation
speed depends on the average of the angular wheel velocities. To see this, consider the case in
which one wheel is fixed and the other rotates. This initially causes the robot to translate

at

of the speed in comparison to both wheels rotating. The rotational speed

is

proportional to the change in angular wheel speeds. The robot's rotation rate grows linearly
with the wheel radius but reduces linearly with respect to the distance between the wheels.

It is sometimes preferable to transform the action space. Let

. In this case,
``translate,'' and

and

can be interpreted as an action variable that means

means ``rotate.'' Using these actions, the configuration transition

equation becomes

(13.17)

In this form, the configuration transition equation resembles (13.15) for the simple car (try
setting

and

). A differential drive can easily simulate the motions

of the simple car. For the differential drive, the rotation rate can be set independently of the

translational velocity. The simple car, however, has the speed

appearing in the

expression. Therefore, the rotation rate depends on the translational velocity.

Figure 13.4: The shortest path traversed by the centre of the axle is simply the line segment
that connects the initial and goal positions in the plane. Rotations appear to be cost-free.
Recall the question asked about shortest paths for the Reeds-Shepp and Dublins cars. The
same question for the differential drive turns out to be uninteresting because the differential
drive can cause the centre of its axle to follow any continuous path in

. As depicted in

Figure 13.4, it can move between any two configurations by: 1) first rotating itself to point
the wheels to the goal position, which causes no translation; 2) translating itself to the goal
position; and 3) rotating itself to the desired orientation, which again causes no translation.
The total distance travelled by the centre of the axle is always the Euclidean distance in
between the two desired positions.

Working of H-bridge:
The name "H-Bridge" is derived from the actual shape of the switching circuit which control
the motion of the motor. It is also known as "Full Bridge". Basically there are four switching

elements in the H-Bridge as shown in

As you can see in the figure above there are four switching elements named as "High side
left", "High side right", "Low side right", "Low side left". When these switches are turned on
in pairs motor changes its direction accordingly. Like, if we switch on High side left and Low
side right then motor rotate in forward direction, as current flows from Power supply through
the motor coil goes to ground via switch low side right. This is shown in the figure below.

Similarly, when you switch on low side left and high side right, the current flows in opposite
direction and motor rotates in backward direction. This is the basic working of H-Bridge. We
can also make a small truth table according to the switching of H-Bridge explained above.

As already said, H-bridge can be made with the help of trasistors as well as MOSFETs, the
only thing is the power handling capacity of the circuit. If motors are needed to run with high
current then lot of dissipation is there. So head sinks are needed to cool the circuit.

Now you might be thinkin why i did not discuss the cases like High side left on and Low side
left on or high side right on and low side right on. Clearly seen in the diagra, you don't want
to burn your power supply by shorting them. So that is why those combinations are not
discussed in the truth table.
Truth table
High left
On
Of

High right
Of
On

Low left
Of
On

Low right
On
Of

On

On

Of

Of

Of

Of

On

On

Description
Motor runs clockwise
Motor runs anticlockwise
Motor stops or
decelerates
Motor stops or
decelerates

As already said, H-bridge can be made with the help of transistors as well as MOSFETs; the
only thing is the power handling capacity of the circuit. If motors are needed to run with
1

high current then lot of dissipation is there. So head sinks are needed
to cool the circuit. Now you might be thinking why I did not discuss the cases like High side l
eft on and Low side
left on or high side right on and low side right on.Clearly seen in the diagram, you don't want
to burn your power supply by shorting them. So that is why those combinations are not discus
sed in the truth table.

1 Edit it properly.