Embedded system for sewerage robot control

The Singapore government is building DTSS (Deep Tunnel Sewage System) due to increase drainage and potable water needs. As it is difficult and relatively dangerous for workers to enter a deep tunnel, a mobile robot has been designed and developed for sewer inspection. For the control of a robot system, an embedded control system is necessary. Generally, the embedded system plays the role of controlling, communicating, and connecting the various parts of the robot system. This project is based on the TivaC TM4C1294XL development board as the platform of choice, and uses Code Composer Studio, which is an Integrated Development Environment developed by Texas Instruments (TI), to achieve a series of functions required for directing robot using the C language programming. The main work completed in this report includes: A Real-time Operating System (RTOS) with multiple synchronization tasks constructed by using the Texas Instrument RTOS package. Network communication between the robot system and the PC is implemented by developing the Ethernet socket using Network Development Kit, and a series of instructions for operation of the robot system was designed. Based on the Senshub, which is a sensor platform developed by TI, TMP006 temperature sensor and the BMP180 air pressure sensor can provide real-time temperature and pressure data. Besides, the GPIO port of the board is used for digital signals and PWM output to control the LED lights arrays and drive motors. Based on the characteristics of remote networked control and sensing of DTSS robots, this report selects TivaC 1294XL and senshub, providing ideas for the selection of similar embedded systems. Besides, the program design of this report provides a solution to avoid conflicts between multi-sensor operation and robot movement instructions. In the beginning, this report attempted to use the interruption to arrange two processes. However, interruption caused the failure of movement instructions during the delay. Therefore, to avoid the mutual interference of the processes, RTOS was used to block the sensor process when it is waiting for a delay. In the end, a Networked robot embedded system with real-time movement and lighting control, able to show real-time pressure and temperature in the deep tunnel has been developed.Master of Science (Smart Product Design