Computer controlled Robot with Arduino
Intro
For this tutorial we will be using the Explore Robo kit. You may go ahead and download the schematics and other details from the link.
To give a brief the Robo Controller board has a CP2102 USB to UART(Serial) convertor. We give commands to the robot from the terminal and move it. This is a very simple type and you can easily hack it. The controller board also has a atmega8 MCU with Arduino bootloader, hence we can code it from the Arduino IDE
- include <Firmata.h>
int MotorLeft[2] = {A0,A1}; int MotorRight[2] = {A2,A3};
void setup() { Serial.begin(9600); MotorInit(); Serial.print("*Explore Robo Mode Computer: Controlled*\n\r"); Serial.println("Commands:\n W->Forward \n S->Backwards \n A->Left \n D->Right"); }
void loop() { int command; command = Serial.read();
switch(command)
{
case 'w': Robot_Forward(); delay(100); break;
case 's': Robot_Backward(); delay(100); break;
case 'a': Robot_Left(); delay(100); break;
case 'd': Robot_Right(); delay(100); break;
//in case the caps lock is ON
case 'W': Robot_Forward(); delay(100); break;
case 'S': Robot_Backward(); delay(100); break;
case 'A': Robot_Left(); delay(100); break;
case 'D': Robot_Right(); delay(100); break;
default: break;
}
}
//Intialize the motor void MotorInit() {
int i;
for(i=0 ; i<2; i++)
{
pinMode(MotorLeft[i],OUTPUT);
pinMode(MotorRight[i],OUTPUT);
}
} //Robot Driving Functions void Robot_Forward() {
digitalWrite(MotorLeft[0],0); digitalWrite(MotorLeft[1],1); digitalWrite(MotorRight[0],1); digitalWrite(MotorRight[1],0);
} void Robot_Backward() {
digitalWrite(MotorLeft[0],1); digitalWrite(MotorLeft[1],0); digitalWrite(MotorRight[0],0); digitalWrite(MotorRight[1],1);
} void Robot_Left() {
digitalWrite(MotorLeft[0],1); digitalWrite(MotorLeft[1],0); digitalWrite(MotorRight[0],1); digitalWrite(MotorRight[1],0);
} void Robot_Right() {
digitalWrite(MotorLeft[0],0); digitalWrite(MotorLeft[1],1); digitalWrite(MotorRight[0],0); digitalWrite(MotorRight[1],1);
}