Development of a Line-Follower Robot for Robotic Competition Purposes

Abstract

A fast line follower is an intelligent robot that must detect and follow a line drawn on a surface with possible changes of inclination. The robotics competitions demand that the robot go over a racetrack in the shortest possible time. The purpose of this paper is to study the line follower robot from the Control Engineering point of view to optimize its performance in standard races. In this paper we propose a SISO angle control scheme based on the relation between estimated line position and yaw robot angle. A sensitive position estimation respect to the line was implemented to improve the provided information interpretation from infrared array sensors respect to the conventional robots. Finally a suction turbine engine and a guarantee action algorithm were added to improve the angle controller response at high speeds and loss of grip on the wheels.