EMBEDDED SYSTEM & ROBOTICS

Two day Teacher’s Training Workshop on Embedded Systems and Introduction to Robotics was organized by MGM, College of Engineering, Noida on 4th and 5th August, 2014. The workshop was organized by IIT Bombay under the e-Yantra Lab Setup Initiative (eLSI) funded by Ministry of Human Resource and Development. The objective of this workshop was to spread education in Embedded System & Robotics. One of the initiatives under e-yantra project is lab set up that supports the infrastructure creation at colleges by providing a platform for training teachers in Robotics. Forty faculty members of 10 Engineering colleges participated in the Robotics workshop. Four Faculty members from Electronics & Communication Engineering Department – Mr. Chandra Shekhar Singh, Mr. Sumit Kumar , Mr. Ashish Gambhir, and Mrs. Susmita Samanta from Dronacharya college of Engineering, Gurgaon attended the workshop.

Day one started with registration of the participants. Resource person for the workshop were team of four Project Engineers, Mr. Saurav Shandilya, Mr. Yash Josi, Mr. Parin Chheda and Mr. Viral Bhiwandiwala from IITB, Mumbai.

In inaugural session Mr. Shandilya briefed participants about the mission and vision of the workshop. He added that the idea is to incorporate embedded system and robotics into engineering education with the objective of engaging students and teachers through exciting hands-on application of engineering principles.

Technical session started in Computer Lab with the introduction of Fire Bird V Robot platform. Mr. Chheda, discussed the complete configuration of the Fire Bird V robot. Following components with their functions were discussed:

1. Sensors: For Sensing the surrounding environment

2. Actuators: For movement of robots and its parts

3. Control: Controller/Processor as brain of Robot

4. Intelligence: User Written Command to perform desired set of action

5. Power: A necessity for making a system work

6. Communication: Robot can talk to another robot/PCThen after ATmega 2560 was introduced to us.

Mr. Parin explained the Fire Bird V robot in detail which is basically a kit onto which various sensors are embedded. The microcontroller used in Fire Bird Robot is Atmel manufactured ATmega 2560 which is basically an 8 bit AVR microcontroller. The sensors interfaced with Fire Bird V robot kit are Five Sharp IR range sensor, 8 IR Proximity sensors, 1 White Line sensor, 2 Position Encoder, 1 Infrared TSOP Receiver. Functioning of the white line sensor, position encoder, infrared TSOP receiver, servo mounted sensor pod, accelerometer were explained in detail.

In the afternoon session Input-Output Ports in ATmega2560 and buzzer programming using embedded C were explained. One buzzer Program was run successfully. Then the motion control and velocity control using PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) was discussed in detail by Mr. Yash Joshi along with its programming. He explained various motion controls like forward, backward, right, left, soft right, soft left, backward left, backward right. L293D IC was used for controlling these movements. The session ended with the assignment of moving the robot forward for some time, backward movement soft left and soft right. All the participants have done it with a great enthusiasm.

Day two started with discussion on the topic 'Interrupts' of ATmega 2560 and its programming. In this Mr. Viral explained about interrupt and closed loop programming. He briefed about interrupt handling on Fire Bird V Robot that included sources of interrupt, interrupt calculation, SREG AVR Status Register, EIMSK (External Interrupt Mask Register), EICRA (External Interrupt Control Register A), EICRB (External Interrupt Control Register B),ISR ( Interrupt Service Routine), C-Code.

In the afternoon session Mr. Saurav explained about LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) unit LCD pin configuration, LCD programming that includes LCD interfacing. Steps of LCD initializations and the C-code in order to execute the required data onto the LCD screen were discussed at length. The session ended with an assignment of writing our own name on the LCD screen of the Robot. At last, the workshop ended with a surprise quiz to check our understanding of the subject.

Finally the two day workshop ended with a concluding ceremony. Team leaders as well as participants from colleges expressed their own views and experience about the two day workshop. The team of the IIT Mumbai appreciated this as one of the best workshop they have ever conducted. During these two days participants worked on all aspects of Fire Bird V robot, the Robot was finally handed over to the participants. The workshop has encouraged us to establish the Robotics lab in our own college and to create infrastructure by providing a platform to students training in the area of robotics.