Computer controlled mobile robot

There are many applications for a small vehicle which is capable of moving from place to place in a limited area under digital electronic control. The exact manner in which the information required to control the motion of the vehicle reaches the onboard computer will vary with the specific application. So also the payload on the vehicle (which will generally have to be some form of robot) will obviously depend on the specific duty if the machine is to transport some (possibly toxic) chemical from one part of a processing plant to another, the payload will be a tank fitted with valves which are to be controlled by the onboard computer. In this case the vehicle could possibly be programmed to follow a buried guide cable or even a painted line with bar codes to signal specific locations. If the requirement is for a roving eye for monitoring of a rocket launch or some such potentially hazardous operation, the pay load would be a TV camera on a pan and tilt held controlled by the onboard computer, and the vehicle would be guided from a remote location by a human operator through radio. These are just a couple of examples from a possible multitude of applications where the common factor is the computer controlled mobile robot. In order to provide economic simple solution it is desirable that modular concept is adopted and based on the demand it should be feasible to try out different sub-system modules and finally offering the total solution to the requirement. The attempt has been made to conceptualize, design and develop one such proto-type which can be adopted to propagate the modular concept. This paper discusses an approach to the design of the mobile platform which can form the base of many types of mobile robotic machines. One such modular Mobile Robot proto-type has been developed under TDC programme of Department of Electronics.