Two-day hands-on Workshop on “e- Yantra Robotics”

The e-Yantra Robotics Faculty Team of Electronics & Telecommunication Department of DBCE organized a Two Day Workshop on Firebird V Robot for the students of SE ETC, on 25^th & 26^th of March 2022. The purpose of the Workshop was to spread education in Embedded systems and Robotics.

The students were divided into 7 teams with 6 members in each team, thus training 42 students to work on the Firebird V Robot. The resource persons for the workshop were Prof. Flavia Leitao, Prof. Yeshudas Muttu, Prof. Deron Rodrigues and Prof. Mathilda Colaco.

The first session was held on March 25, 2022 and was delivered by Prof. Yeshudas Muttu 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. Subsequently, the students were given hands-on exposure in Embedded C programming for interfacing the Buzzer and Bar-graph LED using the Atmel-6 Studio.

The second session on the same day was conducted by Prof. Flavia Leitao on interfacing the LCD with the Firebird V Robot. The Students were briefed on the Boot Switch and 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 briefed on 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 next day began with Prof. Deron Rodrigues introducing to the participants the concepts of 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 afternoon session was delivered by Prof. Mathilda Colaco, included briefing about 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 amazing learning experience and showed great enthusiasm executing the given challenges. They suggested that such workshops should be conducted in future that would provide learning beyond curriculum.