My M.Tech Thesis @ IIIT Allahabad

SMART: Social Mobile Advance Robot Testbed

We envision that in near future, Humanoid Robots will enter in the household. They have capability to change the quality of life and advance the human civilizations further. For this thing to happen, humanoid robot researchers need to solve many challenging problems. Towards this we have taken a significant step in developing indigenously a low cost research test bed where researchers can develop and test many technologies for Human Robot interactions. The basic issue which has been addressed is the development of a cost effective platform which will be stable and robust, having an open architecture so that various technologies like speech, vision, intelligence can be integrated with physical gestures. First we have described the developmental architecture of the SMART, and then the application of SMART as an intelligent robot which, for the time being, is capable of demonstrating our robotics and artificial intelligence laboratory to the visitors as a lab guide in an interactive manner.

Below is the SMART in Greeting position


Developed By--
Jitendra Kumar Pal
M.Tech(robotics) IIITA
Jainendra Shukla
M.Tech(robotics) IIITA

Published Paper:
1. SMART - http://www.springerlink.com/content/n23171m677645j05/
2. CLOUD Robotics - http://www.springerlink.com/content/t686230uh2728763/
First paper is published on SMART (Social Mobile Advanced Robot Testbed) Robot, which contains detail description of architecture of SMART, total degree of freedom, algorithm used for real time navigation and algorithm used in real time obstacle detection and avoidance. 

• SMART navigating autonomously in Robotics Lab of IIITA

• SMART guiding audience autonomously in Lab with my professor G.C. Nandi

• Detail of implementation of speech in SMART

• For Speech of Robot we have used an online application TTS
• This online TTS application convert text to speech (English)
• Pronunciation of this application is very good, and it was meeting our requirement, so we have used this application
• Below is real time demo given by SMART in Robotics Lab at IIITA

• Below is real time demo by SMART and showing inner structure of SMART (Working of hand's motors)

• SMART, inspecting by our professor G.C.Nandi

• Manual control of SMART in early stage of develpoing by me [JP], SMART has two modes
• One is Autonomous mode in which it will act as a guide to greet any visitor and give demonstration of Robotics lab to the visitor autonomously
• Second mode is manual mode in which it can be controlled manually by human using system interface. SMART can be controlled by keyboard 

• Very early stage of SMART development (Only Base): below is the demonstration of SMART when we have developed it's base, which contain only two geared motor for navigation. We have used car wiper motors which suites very well for our requirement

• SMART with new professional look (Complete Development): Below is the demonstration given by SMART in autonomous mode, this time cloths of SMART is provided by our very kind Sir Dr. Pavan Chakraborty

•  Other small projects developed during M.Tech
• We have developed this robot for participating in IIT Kanpur techfest Techkriti 2012 in the event Lumos, and we have won 2nd prize. Below Robot Video shown is an autonomous robot which is able to avoid obstacle(in this case black color) so it will move only on the white color. We are using OpenCV for processing the Image in real time.

• Below is small robot capturing ball from the range of its vision, this is bird view arena so range is fixed. Camera is on the top which is fixed so robot has limited area to search for an object and capture it. This small concept can be implemented in many large industry where pic and place of heavy objects is required, without human intervention Robots can do his job autonomously. Video shown below is an autonomous robot which is able to capture a ball any where in its limited environment. Controlling of actuators has been done using parallelport and  We are using OpenCV for processing the Image. It can capture the ball and will drop the ball on the defined check point.

Parallel port programming in Windows XP or Windows Vista

Hello friends, this is very much exciting to control the parallel port, because using parallel port we can control many types of robot from small to very large, there is no limitation we can think beyond the expectation, all the programming can be done on today's fastest computer or laptop and we can place laptop or a CPU in any robot if it is capable of and we can provide vision by camera using vision processing, so lots of ideas can come in picture, here I am giving one simple example that how to control parallel port in windows.

We have two solutions that I know to control parallel port in windows operating system

1. First method

   Using Turbo C for coding and in a C program include dos.h header file as shown in program below.

• This program is for blinking a led at all the data pins of parallel port

#include <stdio.h>
#include <conio.h>
#include <dos.h>
#define PORTID 0x378

void main()
{
long int i;
while(1){
   outportb(PORTID,0xFF); //0xFF will enable all the eight data pin of parallel port
   for(i=0;i<999999;i++); // for delay
   outportb(PORTID,ox00); //0x00 will disable all the data pins of port
   for(i=0;i<999999;i++); // for delay
}
}

• Similarly we can take input from  a parallel port  with the help of inportb(PORTID) function.

• First declare an integer variable

         For Example:
                             int a;
                             a=inportb(PORTID);

• Using above statement, status of data pins of parallel port will be stored in variable a, and then we can use this variable for comparison or any other use.

2. Second method for controlling the parallel port:

• If you want to integrate your parallel port controlling part in vision processing then you need a good IDE for development like Dev-C++, things those are difficult to implement in Turbo C can be easily done in IDE like Dev-C++. Using inpout32.dll library we can achieve parallel port controlling in Dev-C++

• I have done this in Dev-C++ while I was using OpenCV2.2 for real time vision processing, it works very well
• You can download inpout32.dll file

• Unzip the downloaded folder 
• Then go to binaries->DLL and copy inpout32.dll file
• Paste it in 'C:/window/system32/' where all the dll files has been placed
• After pasting this file now you can use this library in your C program in Dev-C++ IDE
• Example is shown below:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <conio.h>
#include <windows.h>
#define p 0x378

typedef short _stdcall (*inpfuncPtr)(short portaddr);
typedef void _stdcall (*oupfuncPtr)(short portaddr, short datum);

int main(void)
{
HINSTANCE hLib;
inpfuncPtr in;
oupfuncPtr out;
long int i;
char c;
hLib = LoadLibrary("inpout32.dll");
if (hLib == NULL) {
printf("LoadLibrary Failed.\n");
getch();
return -1;
}
in = (inpfuncPtr) GetProcAddress(hLib, "Inp32");
if (in == NULL) {
printf("GetProcAddress for Inp32 Failed.\n");
getch();
return -1;
}
out = (oupfuncPtr) GetProcAddress(hLib, "Out32");
if (out == NULL) {
printf("GetProcAddress for Oup32 Failed.\n");
getch();
return -1;
}
out(p,0x00);
printf("OFF\n");
while(1){

while(kbhit()){
c=getch();
if(c=='p'){
printf("ON\n");
out(p,0xFF);
}
else if(c=='o'){
printf("OFF\n");

out(p,0x00);
}

}
FreeLibrary(hLib);
out(p,0x00);
return 0;
}

To know how to control Parallel Port in Linux, see my blog: Parallel port programming in Linux

..........Enjoy...:)

How to control a Motor Using Parallel port.

Parallel port gives a continuos 0 volt(as 0) or continuous 3 volt(as 1).

For controlling a motor in both direction, we can use L293D IC which simple to connect and we can controll two motor with the help of one IC, and the maximum current it can provide to motor is 1A. So if we are using motor controlling in a small robot or something else where no much load and motor can be drive by only 1A current then it is the best IC.



This IC takes only four inputs, which can be 0 or 1,and combination of 0, 1 decide how will motor rotate. And parallel port output is sufficient to give the input in this IC. So we can directly add parallel port outputs to the L293D IC inputs, and can control motor in both direction usning programming, and how to control parallel port output using programming i have discussed this in my earlier post.

But in L293D IC there is a problem we can not give more than 1A current for driving the motor so if we want to drive a motor which takes more current we can use L298 IC it can provide about 2A current. But again if you want more than this current then u have to use relay.

relay is much better solution it can switch 220V AC supply also.

for energizing the realy using parallel port, we can use ULN2803, because parallel port is not able to switch the relay, so it is better option.

Parallel port programming in Linux (Ubuntu)

Hello Every one.

It is very simple to control the parallel port in linux in c. Just run this c program. Make sure you are logged in as a root.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <sys/io.h>
#define pport 0x378

main(int argc,char **argv)
{
unsigned long int i;
if (ioperm(pport,1,1))
    printf("Error: Couldn't get the port at %x\n", pport);

while(1){
 for(i=0;i<99999999;i++);
   outb(0xFF,pport);
   printf("\nON");
 for(i=0;i<99999999;i++);
   outb(0x00,pport);
   printf("OFF");
}
}

This program is for blinking a LED on any data bit of parallel port.

U can change the delay by changing the for loop conditions.

If some one is new to linux then here is some help, how to add root user...

type ' sudo passwd root ' on terminal then hit enter. it will ask password for root user two times, give the password and then login as a root.

enjoy...