Smart Phone Controlled Robot

Color poster with text and images.Robots with advanced capabilities are currently controlled almost exclusively by specialized expensive hardware and sophisticated programs. Smaller simpler system can use inexpensive “instances” of this hardware such as the widely used open-source Arduino or Raspberry Pi, but these systems offer limited capabilities and no long-range communication. This project explored using the computational power and long-range communication capabilities of widely available smart phones. The purpose of this project is to use a smart phone to remotely control a robot. A set of specialized communication and control programs called “Apps” can be developed and downloaded to a smart phone that is connected to the robot. Using a smart phone as the control system of the robot, allows for access to powerful and flexible hardware at a lower cost. The flexibility of the phone’s hardware allows it to be used for remote control over the internet using built in Wi-Fi and Cellular antennas. A smart phone also offers access to a variety of sensors such as gyroscopes and cameras. These sensors can be utilized not only to monitor the robot remotely, but with the powerful processing power of the smart phone, they could be utilized for autonomous control. The combination of the size of a smart phone and its flexibility, could be used to develop a modular system to connect to robots and allow different robots to be controlled simply by plugging the phone in.University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire Office of Research and Sponsored Program