Land Survey Robot

Published on 20 May 2022. Written by Vasanth Vidyakar

The main objective of this project is to build a robot that can conduct a land survey, especially help a user in the calculation of area of the given land and divide into subplots accordingly. You need to use Zigbee technology to establish the connection and make the robot work efficiently.

This project has two parts, one is the survey robot and another is the area measurement module. Timer concept is used to calculate the distance travelled by the robot and the value is transmitted to the PC using Zigbee technology. And next comes the area calculation module where the embedded C language is used to efficiently determine the area of the plot.

Zigbee technology is a bi-directional wireless communication technology for shorter distance, lower complexity, lower cost & power consumption. Also because of low data rate, this technology is mainly used in automatic control of systems.

The advantages of this robot is that manpower required to carry out such area calculation activities can be reduced drastically and also the number of equipments required. It helps both in time saving and achieving better accuracy compared to the conventional methodologies.

Project Description:

AT89S52: The AT89S52 is a low power, high performance CMOS 8-bit microcontroller with 8k bytes of in-system programmable flash memory. This is a powerful microcontroller which provides high flexibility and cost effective solution to many embedded control applications. It has the following standard features: 8K bytes of flash, 256 bytes of RAM, 32 I/O lines, watchdog timer, 2 data pointers, 3 16-bit timers/counters, on-chip oscillator and clock circuitry.
L293D: The L293D are quadruple high-current half drivers. It is designed to provide bidirectional drive currents of upto 600-MA at voltage ranging from 4.5V to 36V. It is mainly used to drive inductive loads such as relays, solenoids, dc and bipolar stepping motors. On the L293D, external high-speed output clamp diodes should be used for inductive transient suppression.
DC Motor: This is an electric machines which converts electrical energy to mechanical energy. This is the most commonly used motor for the actuation of robots.
Zigbee: The robot uses Zigbee to establish the connection. It works on 2.4GHz ISM band with 20~250kbits/s data rate and has a transmission range of upto 1.5 km.

Project Implementation:

The land survey robot performs three important tasks,

First, it moves freely around the plot when given a desired direction. The movement of the robot is controlled and the direction in which it moves can be manipulated.
Second, once it obtains the length of any desired plot as it moves along the desired direction then it transmits the length. This transmitted length is then stored in the PC and an area measurement module is used to calculate the area.
Third, the robot can also be modified to calculate the area of subdivided plot. The robot just needs to be programmed differently and the subdivision of the plot can be calculated in a very less duration.
The robot replaces the conventional techniques of area measurement and the discrepancies involved in it by automating the entire process.

Project Brief: The control unit transmits the command using Zigbee, which is received by the Zigbee receiver unit in the robot. The survey robot then moves according to the instructions received. There will also be a LCD display mounted which displays the value of lengths. A buzzer and stepper motor is used when subdivision of plot is performed. The geared DC motor is used for actuation and is controlled by the L293D motor driver. A 12V battery or a 12V adapter is used to power up the entire robotic system.

Software requirements:

Keil Uvision 3: Keil Software makes C compilers, macro assemblers, real-time kernels, debuggers, simulators, integrated environments and evaluation boards for the 8051, 251, ARM and XC16x/C16x/ST10 microcontroller families

Programming language: Embedded C language

Kit required to develop Land Survey Robot:

Technologies you will learn by working on Land Survey Robot:

Land Survey Robot

Project Description:

Project Implementation:

Software requirements:

Any Questions?

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