IOSR Journal of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IOSR-JEEE) e-ISSN: 2278-1676 Volume 4, Issue 4 (Jan. - Feb.

2013), PP 30-37 www.iosrjournals.org

Solar Energy Based Optimal Battery Charging Mechanism in Robotic Vehicle by Using Smart Host Microcontroller
S.Menakambal1, A.Satheesh2
PG Scholar, 2Professor M.E (Embedded System Technologies) 1,2 Department of EEE, Nandha Engineering College, Erode
1 1

Abstract: The PENTRON robotic platform-an autonomous unmanned exploration vehicle specialized in
recognition. The robotic vehicle having pack of two rechargeable batteries each performing charging and discharging operation independently. The two pack of battery charging system can be controlled by means of tracked single tiltable solar PV panels for improving PENTRONs power regardless of its mobility. The design concept of robotic vehicle is based on a PIC16F877 microcontroller and the efficient wireless camera, temperature sensor, humidity sensor, light sensor, voltage sensors are attached in the robotic vehicle. The ZigBee wireless technology provides adequate information about the environmental conditions in nearby PC. The aim of this paper is to reduce the weight of the robotic vehicle by means of reducing the usage of microcontrollers and to increase the power of the robotic vehicle by the help of solar PV Panels. On the other hand, the switching time taken by two pack of batteries can be reduced. Keywords: Wireless camera, LiPo battery, mechatronic system, photovoltaic (PV), robotic vehicle, solar tracker, Sensors, Zig-Bee transceiver, PIC Microcontroller

I.

Introduction

SOLAR power systems in autonomous robotic vehicles have been often used for some years. A real example is the VANTER robotic platform uses huge number of microcontrollers and 3 solar PV Panels. This in turn improves weight of the vehicle and power consumption [1]. The main drawback behind existing system is that the robotic vehicle having four-wheel-drive (4WD) and the individual control of each wheel allow different types of movement; including Ackerman configuration, the crabbing maneuver or the rotation with inner inertial centre. The DC motor is fixed in all the four wheels, each wheel consumes 12V supply and 60mA from the battery. This leads to huge power consumption. Solar tracker prototypes built in mobile robots have proven that orientation of PV systems leads to increased energy efficiency relative to systems with fixed solar panels (20 50% per collector)[2]. In Proposed model, the PENTRON robotic exploration vehicle aims to improve various aspects of the aforementioned rovers with scientific and academic purposes. The rover was developed to be guided and has 2 wheels coupled to a plane chassis that can rotate independently. The 2-wheel-drive (2WD) is placed at one end and the tracking ball is placed at the other end for the movement of robotic vehicle. The two wheels in PENTRON are sustained by means of independent passive suspension of double aluminium fork to absorb terrain vibrations shown in (see Fig.1). Each wheel consists of two motors, one for rotation and another for driving. The forward movement is produced by means of dc motors (12 V and 60 mA) that provides 120r/min with a torque of 8.87 kg/cm. On the other hand, the rotation motor provides a speed of 152r/min. The reduction huge microcontroller to single microcontroller and four wheels to two wheels in the proposed model improves the rover capacity and reduces power consumption. The robotic vehicle having single tiltable Solar PV Panels it can be controlled by means of solar tracked panels. The robotic system programming is divided into three main code levels and its hardware was designed with a hierarchical control structure based on modular microcontrollers. The top level program, carried out in LabVIEW it is executed in a remote PC and offers a Zig-Bee technology to monitor and control the whole robotic vehicle. The second code level, programmed in C language, runs autonomously on a master PIC16F877 microcontroller aboard PENTRON.

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Solar Energy Based Optimal Battery Charging Mechanism in Robotic Vehicle by Using Smart Host Microcontroller

Fig 1: PENTRON: A solar-powered robotic vehicle

II.

Proposed System

The PENTRON rover series has a single solar panel system coupled to an assisted suspension mechanism. This prevents the manipulator arm mounted on the middle of the rover to minimize solar panelgenerated power and allows it to dust solar panel surface. 2.1 Robot terminal unit The PIC16F877 microcontroller which monitors PENTRON power consumption and decisions in a complete autonomous way. The microcontroller performs two main functions: 1) detecting environmental light level and controlling the solar tracking system to obtain the highest power; and 2) interpreting operation data from batteries and solar panels to control the working mode of the charger accordingly (see Fig. 2).

Fig 2: Block diagram of PENTRON The robotic vehicle generally uses four different kinds of sensors: They are Temperature sensors, voltage sensors,Light sensors and Humidity sensors. The sensors that used in a robotic vehicle observes the remote environmental conditions and the observed data can be measured and simulated by the help of MP LAB software in nearby PC. The thermistor is the temperature sensitive resistor which is used to measure body temperature. The thermistor resistor is varied as per the temperature. The varying resistance level is converted into corresponding voltage signal which is given to ADC through amplifier. The ADC is nothing but analog to www.iosrjournals.org 31 | Page

Solar Energy Based Optimal Battery Charging Mechanism in Robotic Vehicle by Using Smart Host Microcontroller

digital converter which converts the input analog signal to corresponding digital signal. The converted digital signal is given to microcontroller. The LM 324 thermistor consist of four independent high gains internal frequency compensated operational amplifier which were designed specifically to operate from a single power supply over a wide voltage range. The voltage sensors are generally used for observing the voltage level of the Li-Po batteries placed inside the robotic vehicle. A photo resistor or LDR is an electronic component whose resistance decreases with increasing incident light intensity. The light sensors generally observes the intensity of light that coming from sun. The light sensors attached in the robotic vehicle predicts the environmental light intensity and sends it to microcontroller. The robotic vehicle uses humidity sensors for observing the moisture content of the atmosphere. The wireless camera fixed infront of the robotic vehicle captures the image of the environment and the captured image can be monitored in our nearby PC through Zig-Bee wireless technology (see Fig.3).

Fig 3: Architecture of Robot terminal unit 2.2 System terminal unit Zig-Bee is a low-cost, low-power, wireless mesh network standard. The low cost allows the technology to be widely deployed in wireless control and monitoring applications. The wired serial communication is used to transfer the data between microcontroller and PC through Zig-Bee communication. PC side is the transmitter end and Microcontroller is the receiving end. To Interface the micro controller to PC we need level converter which current TTL compatible voltage level to RS232 voltage level using wireless Zig-Bee. The PC is used to drive the robot. The robot side captures the image and captured picture is displayed in the PC.

Fig 4: Architecture of System Terminal Unit The commands send from the PC side is recieved by the Microcontroller as a signals and activates the Driver Circuit. Driver Circuit consists of Transistor which acts as switch to turn ON and turn OFF the relay. The relay output is given to motors which are attached in the robot. To drive the robot in the forward direction corresponding information is transmitted from PC side and received in robot side using Zig-Bee transceiver (see Fig .4)

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Solar Energy Based Optimal Battery Charging Mechanism in Robotic Vehicle by Using Smart Host Microcontroller

Fig 5: Mechanical design of the solar tracking system of PENTRON: (a) upper solar panel, (b) mobile solar panels,(c) aluminium chassis,(d) methacrylate chassis,(e)methacrylate support,(f)pan and tilt unit,(g)pitch servometer, and(h)yaw servomotor. Fig. 5. shows the mechanical solar tracking system. This comprises(a) a fixed solar panel mounted horizontally on PENTRON and (b) Single panels with symmetrical movements. The mechanical structure is mounted on (c) an aluminium chassis on which the electronics were mounted. On top of this platform (d) a methacrylate panel with (e) two side supports has been assembled. The solar panel are mounted on (f) pan and tilt units formed DYS0213MGs metal gear servos. Each pair of digital servomotors allow soft rotations with an amplitude of180 in (g) azimuth and (h) elevation, so that the solar panel can be oriented toward any part of the space. 2.3 Li-Po batteries switching operation The switching system consists of two MAX1538EVKIT selectors with break-before-make operation logic. Their function is connecting electrically the charge and discharge paths between the batteries, the charger module, and the load system (see Fig.6) that is, selector 1 is inserted between the charger and the dual-battery pack. Its function is routing the current from the PV panels to the input of the charger and, from there, to the battery selected in each moment. Selector 2 is used to connect the selected battery to the load system. Therefore, the dynamic connections of the electric circuit are carried out according to the PIC16F877-defined logical operation mode. This is based on the voltage thresholds programmed into the control algorithm. Now, these two pack of Li-Po batteries performs their charging and discharging operation independently. In the first row, selector 1 was programmed to charge battery 1 while selector 2 is preset to discharge battery 2. Charge current obtained from the PV panels is routed to the charger through selector 1 and, from the charger, to the selected battery. Likewise, the discharge current of battery 2 is routed to the load system through selector 2. The main advantage of the dual selector system is that it allows hot swapping of separated power supplies. In addition, in case both batteries were fully discharged, a working mode was programmed in selector 1 to supply the load system directly from the PV panels. TABLE I. Logical operation mode of the battery selectors

C= Closed, O= Open, X= Not Connected

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Solar Energy Based Optimal Battery Charging Mechanism in Robotic Vehicle by Using Smart Host Microcontroller

Fig 6: Overall connection diagram for batteries selectors.

III. Experiment Results

3.1 Measuring parameters The three parameters like (Temperature, humidity, Battery voltage) are predicted by the sensors attached in the robotic vehicle and also plot graph depends on parameters. Parameter value received from microcontroller kit through RS232 port (serial communication) in 9600 baud rate, parity bit is none and data bit is 8. Proteus7.2 simulation software is used to run and simulate the total process. The software code is written in MP LAB software with high tech c compiler. The embedded C language is used for program compilation and it is converted into hex file. 3.1.1 Input Parameter Measuring

Fig 7: Input Parameter Measuring 3.1.2 Waveform of Input Parameters

Fig 8: Characteristics of Temperature www.iosrjournals.org 34 | Page

Solar Energy Based Optimal Battery Charging Mechanism in Robotic Vehicle by Using Smart Host Microcontroller

Fig 9: Characteristics of Humidity

Fig 10: Characteristics of Battery Voltage 3.1.3 Rotating Direction The rotating direction of robotic vehicle depends upon the key press from PC (LabVIEW software) and also we can send the command from pc to microcontroller through RS232 port Key. TABLE II. Working Principle of Robot Rotating Direction Key Press Command send LED from PC to UC Glowing Forward F 1010 Reverse R 0101 Left L 0110 Right G 1001 Stop S 0000 If the robotic vehicle needs to move in the forward direction corresponding information is transmitted from PC to microcontroller in the form of signals using Zig-Bee transceiver. In Receiver section, the microcontroller drives the robot in forward direction as per the appropriate command given by PC. Likewise, the robotic vehicle can be moved in reverse, left and right direction. The direction of the robotic vehicle can be indicated by LED.

Fig 11: Robot rotating direction

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Solar Energy Based Optimal Battery Charging Mechanism in Robotic Vehicle by Using Smart Host Microcontroller

Fig 12: Characteristics of the charge voltage measured in the cells battery

Fig 13: Characteristics of the discharge voltage measured in the cells battery

IV. Conclusion
SOLAR power systems in autonomous robotic vehicles have been often used for some years. In real example most of the supplied energy is generated by a reduced size photovoltaic (PV) panel. It includes the construction of a robotic vehicle which we designed is to move robot in forward and reverse with right and left turns using dual battery. The robot controlling is done with the help of microcontroller which brings the robot on movement. The proposal includes that the monitoring actions of rover are simulated using LabVIEW software.

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