Hands-on Workshop on “e-Yantra Robotics”

The e-Yantra Robotics Faculty Team of Electronics & Telecommunication Department of DBCE organized a Workshop on Firebird V Robot for the students of Second Year ECS, Second Year Computer and Second Year Mechanical Engineering, on 23rd August and 24th August 2024. The target areas of the workshop were Embedded Systems and Robotics.

The students were divided into 6 teams with 5 members in each team, thus training 30 students, from the ETC, Computer and Mechanical departments to work on the Firebird V Robot. The resource persons for the workshop were Prof. Deron Rodrigues, Prof. Flavia Leitao and Prof. Mathilda Colaco.

The first session on 23^rd August 2024 was undertaken by Prof. Deron Rodrigues on Introduction to Robotics that included major components such as Sensors, Actuators, Control system, Intelligence, Power supply, Communication, Indicating Devices of a Robot and Introduction to Firebird V ATmega 2560. The students were also introduced to the various Input-Output Ports and Registers in ATmega 2560 and how they can be accessed.

The second session was delivered by Prof. Flavia Leitao, where the students were given Hands-on exposure in Embedded C programming for interfacing the Buzzer, Bar-graph LED, Boot Switch with the Firebird V Robot, using the Atmel-6 Studio.  The students were briefed on the LCD operation and were then asked to interface the LCD and the Boot Switch for a given application. This was followed by interfacing of the Motors. The students were explained the Motor Driver IC L293D and the different Motions and were then given a small task of how to interface the Motors and device an application to make the Robot move in a defined direction.

The session on 24^th August 2024 was given by Prof. Deron Rodrigues. It included introduction to counters and timers in ATmega 2560 for calculating time delays for various applications. Subsequently Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) was introduced followed by hands-on program to control the Velocity of the Motors. In the second session, the students were also taught analog sensor interfacing using Analog to Digital conversion (ADC). The session included overview on the sensors like Sharp IR sensors, Proximity Sensor, etc., interfaced to the different channels of ATmega2560 followed by ADC initialization and programming.

The last session was delivered by Prof. Mathilda Colaco, which included use of the sensors for object detection and white line sensing. Thereafter the students were guided to program the robot for object detection using the Sharp IR sensor and indicating whether it is near or far. This was followed by introduction to line follower algorithm with different conditions to be considered for the same. With the knowledge of ADC interfacing & line follower logic, the students were finally able to code to make the robot follow a line.

The Students had an enriching learning experience and showed great enthusiasm executing the given challenges. Many of them went ahead and participated in the annual e-yantra competition organized by IITB.