Automatic Transport System For Industrial Applications

Transportation is a serious issue deserving due concern in industries. Raw materials and finished goods must be moved within different work stations in an industry. The overall efficiency and production rate of an industry can be improved drastically by employing microcontroller based robots for carrying out these movements. This paper demonstrates the design and implementation of the prototype of such a robot. The robot is controlled by an ATMEGA 16 microcontroller. The communication with the robot from an external source is realized through a ST-TX01 315/433.92 MHZ ASK Transmitter and ST-RX04 315/433.92 MHZ ASK Receiver. The data transmitted is encoded through a HT12E chip and the same is decoded with HT12D chip fitted inside the robot. This decoded information dictates the orientation (clockwise or anticlockwise) of the gear motors fitted on the robot. The gear motors are interfaced through the motor driver IC L293D. The robot moves to its destination by tracing a black line (in white background), for this purpose sensors are fixed on the bottom part of the same. The entire behaviour, motion sequences etc, that the robot has to follow was written as a program and was burned into the ATMEGA 16 microcontroller. The software used for this was AVR STUDIO 5 (provided by the manufacturer of the ATMEGA microcontroller)