A fully autonomous mobile mini-robot

In recent years, many new designs of micro robots have been developed. Miniaturisation is a challenge and most mechanisms designed up to now are not autonomous, i.e. they don't have their intelligence and/or power supply on board. A new fully autonomous miniature mobile robot has been designed in our lab in a final year project. It has been programmed to follow a black line on the ground. An autonomous mechatronic system consists at least of a sensor, an actuator, a microprocessor to provide intelligence and a power supply. In our case, the robot's intelligence is based on a PIC16C71 microcontroller that controls its movement. To follow a black line, an infrared emitter and two receivers are placed at the front of the robot. As actuators, two watch motors are used. The gears of the watch's second hand are directly used as wheels to move the system. Two small batteries supply the energy to the motors and the microprocessor as well. The technical details of the mini robot are as follows: dimensions: 20 mm x 8 mm x 15 mm velocity: 40 mm/s power consumption: 6 mW This low power consumption allows the system to move autonomous for about 8 - 10 hour