© 2015 IJIRT | Volume 1 Issue 12 | ISSN: 2349-6002

HI-TECH LINE FOLLOWER USING PID CONTROL

Kamaljeet, Gurpreet Kaur,Lokesh Yadav
Dronacharya College of engineering

Abstract: - Line Following is one of the most algorithm involves three separate constant parameters.
important aspects of robotics. A line follower robot The proportional, the integral and derivative values,
is an autonomous robot which is able to follow denoted P, I, and D. Simply put, these values can be
either a black or white line that is drawn on the interpreted in terms of time: P depends on the present
surface consisting of a contrasting color. It is error, I on the accumulation of past errors, and D is a
designed to move automatically and follow the prediction of future errors, based on current rate of
made plot line. PID control of line follower is a change.
method consisting of Proportional, Integral &
Derivative Functions to improve the movement of II. SYSTEM DESIGN
the robot. The robot uses several sensors to identify
It consists of two types of parts.
the line thus assisting the robot to stay on the track.
The robot is driven by DC motors to control the A. Main parts
movement of the wheels. The microcontroller will  Microcontroller
be used to perform and implement PID algorithms  Motor Driver (H-bridge)
to control the speed of the motors steering the robot
 IR Sensors (Light Sensors)
to travel along the line smoothly. This project aims
 Motors
to implement the PID algorithm and control the
 Battery
movement of the robot by proper tuning of the
B. Additional Parts
control parameters and thus achieve better
 Chassis
performance.
Index Terms— Proportional, Integrals, Derivative,  Wheels
Line Follower  Spacers
 Screws etc.
I. INTRODUCTION III. BLOCK DIAGRAM

Simple line follower robot- It’s a machine that follows

a line either a black line on white surface or vice versa.

High tech line follower robot- High tech line follower

is also a line follower which follows either the black
line on white surface or vice versa but in less time and
less error by using feedback system.

How high tech is different from simple? It takes less

time to complete the path. It is more reliable than
Fig 1: Block diagram of Robot
simple line follower robot. The technology we used to
make high tech line follower is PID [4].A proportional- IV. EXPLANATION OF BLOCK DIAGRAM
integral-derivative controller (PID controller) is a
control loop feedback mechanism. A PID controller A. IR Sensor
calculates an "error" value as the difference between a
measured process variable and a desired set point. The  IR Sensor is also Known as light sensor.
controller attempts to minimize the error by adjusting
the process control outputs [3]. The PID controller  It is used to detect black or white surfaces [5].

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 It consists of two main parts  It is a versatile device which can be

programmed according to our need and work.
a) Led
 Here we are using PID algorithm in the
1. It transmits Infra-Red light on the programming of Microcontroller to
surface (transmitter). implement it for a line follower (or Hi-tech
Line follower).
b) Phototransistor

2. It detects the light (receiver).

When Led transmits light on the surface then, if

surface is black the whole light will be absorbed by the
surface and no light will get reflected back to the
phototransistor and if the surface is white, light is
reflected and it is detected by the phototransistor as
shown in the Fig.2.

Fig 3: Pin diagram of ATmega 8

C. Motor Driver(H-Bridge)

 It is a device used to control the motion

(direction of rotation) of two motor
simultaneously [1].

 It uses the IC L293D which can govern the

motion of two motors at a time.
Fig 2: Working of IR Sensor
 Fig.4 shows the pin diagram of L293D IC and
B. Microcontroller the pins showing Input 1, 2, 3 and 4 are the
inputs from Microcontroller.
 It is a compact microcomputer.
 It uses external power supply to provide full
 Used to control the operation of whole robot.
rated power to both the motors.
 It is a programmable device.

 Fig.3 shows the pin diagram of an

ATMEGA8 microcontroller which we have
used for our robot.It gives the signals to H-
Bridge how to control the motion and which
motor will rotate in which direction all this is
governed by the microcontroller [6].

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reduce the error of whatever we are controlling. It

takes in input, calculates the error from intended
behavior and accordingly adjusts the output so that
greater accuracy is obtained.

 Line following seems to be accurate at low speed,

but at high speed it wobbles around the line and
sometimes gets out of track. Hence, some kind of
control is required to make line following efficient,
this is where we need to use PID control.

Before implementing PID control, we need to know

Fig 4: Motor Driver L293D about the basic terms associated with it.

D. Motors  Target

 It is a machine which converts electrical It is the position you always want the line follower to
energy into mechanical energy (rotational be or always try to be, i.e., center of the line.
Energy)
 Current Position
 It can be of many types but the most suited
It is the current position with respect to line.
for the application of robots are DC motors
[9]
.  Error

 Because they can run in both direction. It is the difference between current position and target
position, it can be positive, negative and zero. So the
 Speed controllable.
more far away the robot will be from target position,
E. Batteries or Power Supply the more will be the error.

 Each and Every machine needs power to  Proportional Component

work.
This component tells us how far the robot is away from
the line, to right, to extreme right, to left or to extreme
 So in our robot we used batteries as the power
sources. left. This component is proportional to the current
position of the robot with respect to target position and
 Because their weight to power ratio is very proportionally varies output speed of robot to bring
low. back to intended position.

 They are portable.

 Easy to replace.

 Better sources of power.

V. WHAT IS PID? Fig 5: Proportional Control

 PID is an acronym for Proportional, Derivative and  Integral Component

Integral. As the name suggests the three basic
mathematical functions [10]. Main task of PID is to

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This component gives the accumulated error over
time. It involves adding up error after every step. This
is basically used to tell that output given by the
algorithm is not sufficiently changing the value of
error and the output given needs to be varied more to
reduce the error value this is done for both positive and
negative error.
 In certain cases the sensors would all be off
the line, this confuses the robot since it
doesn't correspond to any condition of the
robot.
 Line following is not smooth.
 Line follower keeps wobbling too much left
and right.

 Line follower without PID wastes more

battery power and consumes more time.

Fig 6: Integral Control

 Derivative Component

It is the rate at which robot oscillates right or left

around the line. This will help us to know how quickly
the error change from time to time. This prevents the
overshooting of the robot form line while correcting
the error [2]. So when error reduces it stops motion of
robot and it doesn't continue to move to other side of
line to produce error.
Fig 8: Line follower without PID
b) Line follower with PID
PID is an acronym for Proportional, Integral and
Derivative and widely used control algorithm in
robotics, industries and other areas. After
implementing PID we observed that:

 This algorithm is faster than previous

algorithm but the robot still wobble about the
line.

 The line following is much faster, smoother

Fig 7: Derivative Control and efficient.

 PID Constants  The robot will follow the line keeping its
center above the line.
There are three constants Kp, Ki and Kd used to vary
the effect of proportional, integral and derivative.  It consumes less Battery Power and time.
These values depend upon the various things ranging
from weight to the size of the robot.

VI. COMPARISON OF ROBOT WITH AND

WITHOUT PID

a) Line follower without PID

A line follower without PID has been constructed and

we observed that:

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[4] http://www.ijecse.org/wp-
content/uploads/2012/06/Volume-
3Number-1PP-51-56x.pdf

[5] http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?t
p=&arnumber=6566505&url=http%3A
%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel7%2
F6559347%2F6566328%2F06566505.p
df%3Farnumber%3D6566505

[6] http://enged.com.au/robots-in-todays-
world
Fig 9: Line follower with PID
[7] http://www.slideshare.net/satyendragupt
VII. Applications
ajnp/android-controlled-robot-
33833317
 Line Follower robots can be used in Manufacturing
Industries where goods can be carried from one place [8] Smart phones android operated robot,
to another following the same path. http://www.sooxmatechnologies.com
 Line followers can be used to deliver mail within an [9] Bluetooth based android phone/tablet
office building. controlled robot,
http://www.robokits.co.in and
 Line followers can be used as Tour guide in
http://www.robokitsworld.com
museums, zoo and many historical monuments.
[10] http://www.atmel.com/devices/atmega3
VIII. Future Scope
28.aspx
Smart Transportation:

In Future, line follower robot can be used in public

transport system so that public transport will be safer
and interactive. This will reduce road accidents by
reducing human Errors.

Smart wheelchair:

Line Follower robots can be used as a Wheel Chair if

special path will be made for especially abled persons
so that they can ttravel anywhere.

IX. REFERENCES

[1] http://emartee.com/product/41982/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded
_system

[3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/deve
loper?id=Hobbyprojects.com&hl=en

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