Smartphone Motion Sensor Controlled Wireless

Mobile Robot


Jidhu Mohan M, Prashant Kumar Tripathi, K.V Gangadharan


Abstract~ This paper present the motion control of a mobile
vehicle using sensor data from the high end mobile phones.
LabVIEW running on a system communicates with the mobile
phone using Bluetooth. For sensor integration in system tri-axial
accelerometer of mobile phone with android platform is used. An
application was made on the android platform for sending the
sensor information from the mobile to the computer. The
accelerometer sensor data was read by the application installed in
the phone and sent to the 'G` program in LabVIEW. The terrain
vehicle was connected to the system through Wi-Fi. The vehicle has
four driving wheels and the angular velocities of the wheels on each
side were independently controlled. Motion control of terrain
vehicle is very important research field today. The application of
this type of vehicle is in military missions and for reconnaissance.
The controlling method found to be flexible way of controlling the
mobile vehicles.
Keywards-Smartphane;Acce/erameter;Andra/d;B/aetaath; W/-
F/;AQ.
I. INTRODUCTION
Motion control of mobile robots is an important research field
in these days, because mobile robots are a very interesting subject
both in scientific research and in practical. They can be found
in industry, in special areas (such as data acquisition in harsh
environments or after some disasters, monitoring dangerous
environments), medicine and assistance for elderly and disabled
people, and so on. In all the methods the control may be
automatic or manual. The currently used methods are keyboard
control, joystick control etc. This paper proposes new method of
controlling the mobile robots using the accelerometer data from a
Smartphone.
A Smartphone is a high-end mobile phone that combines the
functions of a personal digital assistant (PDA) and a mobile
phone. Smartphones becoming versatile as consumers relies more
and more on their Smartphone for various purposes. With the
development of Smartphone operating systems, such as Apple`s
iOs, Google`s Android and Blakcberry`s RIM operating systems
on the rise, it is very much flexible to have new controlling
method of the robot motion.


Jidhu Mohan M, Prashant Kumar Tripathi, K.V Gangadharan
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
National Institute of Technology Karnataka,
Surathkal,Mangalore, India
E-mail: jidhu.mohangmail.com
The Android platform is an open platform for mobile devices
consisting of an operating system, applications and middleware
[1]. Android gives users the opportunity to build and publish their
own applications by providing an open development
environment. Android treats all applications (native and third-
party) as equals [2]. Having such an open development
environment requires security measures to be taken in order to
protect the integrity of the Android platform and the privacy of its
users. This is especially true for Google`s Android platform,
being that it has an open development environment. The security
is critical in the case of military missions, reconnaissance etc.
Accelerometers have been used for a variety of uses
throughout the world today, from medical to research, from
performance testing to robotics. The accelerometer in Android
phones measures the acceleration of the device on the x (lateral),
y (longitudinal), and z (vertical) axes. Accelerometers can be
used to detect movement and the rate of change of the speed of
movement. It is possible for an application to collect a user`s
accelerometer data, when it is running and send to the paired
device. With accelerometer data and the use of a 'G` program
running on the system to collect the information it is possible to
control a mobile robot connected to it.






Fig.1. Overall architecture

II. SYSTEM OVERVIEW
The Bluetooth wireless technology provides short range,
wireless connectivity between common devices [3]. The Smart
Phone was first installed with the sensor data reading
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application. The phone was paired to the Bluetooth adapter
connected to the computer.

A. Discovering
The server makes a discovery request. Clients within Bluetooth
range that are set to the discoverable mode will respond to this
request with a set of information about themselves such as
device name, class, and unique MAC (Media Access Control)
address. When the server chooses a client to pair with, a request
for pairing was automatically sent to that specific client.

B. Pairing
The server and the client share a link-key which was used for
authentication between the two. Once the two devices are paired
the server and client share more security sensitive information
required for an encrypted connection.

C. Connecting
The server opens a Bluetooth server socket and broadcasts a set
of services identified by their channel numbers, names,
descriptions and most importantly unique Universally Unique
Identifiers (UUID) [3]. The server waits and listens for incoming
connection requests.
The client performs a Service Discovery Protocol (SDP) lookup
during which it searches the services provided by the server to
find the one it wants to communicate with. The client does this
by going through the UUIDs the server is providing and tries to
match one of them with the UUID it has.
Upon finding a match, the client requests to communicate on
that specific channel. The server hears this request and replies
with a confirmation or a rejection. If the request is confirmed,
the server shares the requested RF channel with the client.
The two devices connected and are ready for data transmission.
Data transmission happens until connection is lost or the server
or client terminates the connection.
III. MOBILE ROBOT DESIGN
The mobile robot has four dc motors fixed on a metal
platform. The high torque motors with 12V, 150rpm was used. A
12V, 2.5Ahr Lead acid battery was used to power the robot.

Fig.2. High Torque 12V dc motor with wheel attached
The H-Bridge driver IC L-298 was used to drive the motors.
So the clockwise and anticlockwise motion of the robot was
made possible. Two wheels on one side of the robot were
controlled by the same H-bridge driver.

Fig.3. H-Bridge Circuit for Motor Driver [6]


Fig.4. Bidirectional dc motor control [6]

NI (National Instruments) Wi-Fi DAQ device is a
combination of an NI WLS-9163 wireless carrier and an NI C
Series measurement module. The WLS-9163 provides both
IEEE 802.11b/g and Ethernet connectivity back to a host PC. NI
C Series modules deliver direct sensor connections and built-in
signal conditioning for a variety of measurements. NI WLS-
9163 with cDAQ (Compact DAQ) 9472 was used at the robot
end. So that the data from the computer sent to the robot via WI-
Fi and the digital output module 9472 will give the received
contol signals in the digital form to the H-Bridge circuitary.
The Measurement and Automation was used to configure the
WLS-9163 for connecting it wirelessly to the computer.

Each WLS-9163 carrier features a field-programmable gate
array (FPGA), a microprocessor, RAM, and an IEEE 802.11
radio.


Fig.5. NI WLS 9163 [5]
Ultimately, the most important factor in maintaining a reliable
wireless connection for high-bandwidth waveform data is the NI
Wi-Fi DAQ streaming engine. The NI-DAQmx driver is split
between the host PC and the NI Wi-Fi DAQ device. These two
pieces of software constitute the NI Wi-Fi DAQ streaming
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engine, which abstracts the complexity associated with wireless
data transfers and adds reliability. Once an acquisition has
started, the FPGA onboard the WLS-9163 maintains a sample
clock that ensures data points are evenly spaced in time. NI-
DAQmx firmware pulls in clocked data from the C Series
module through the FIFO and into the 12 MB RAM buffer. On
the host side, the NI-DAQmx driver maintains a circular buffer
in RAM, the size of which is automatically determined by your
sample rate.

NI Wi-Fi DAQ devices support the full IEEE 802.11i security
standard, including AES encryption and IEEE 802.1X
authentication. For configuring the WLS with the cDAQ it was
connected to the system through an Ethernet cable. The
Measurement and Automation explorer was used to configure
the device. The communication channel is also selected. Since
the server program was running in laptop with a Wi-Fi adapter,
it is used to make connection with the robot.


Fig.6. Configuring the WLS 9163 using Measurement and Automation
IV. LABVIEW PROGRAMMING
The LabVIEW program to control the mobile robot was made
and tested first. Five Control signals are sent to the mobile robot.
One is to enable the motors. Two digital inputs are given to
control the motor in clockwise and anticlockwise direction. Even
though the DAQ 9472 supports PWM (Pulse Width modulation)
in the cDAQ, it will not support in the WLS 9163. So the motor
speed controls was not done.



Fig.7. LabVIEW code for motor control


The other part of the code, receives the sensor data sent by the
android application and extract the co-ordinate details from that.
The Bluetooth address of the system was also displayed for
assisting the mobile user to connect the phone to system. The
string sent by the application has the pitch and yaw information
separated by the letter 'x`. The communication toolbox in the
LabVIEW was used. The program will first discover the name
and address of the system itself and display. Then the Bluetooth
listener is created. Then it will wait for the listener to connect. If
the listener is connected and sending the data, then the data is
processed and the orientation data is extracted from this.



Fig.8. LabVIEW code for Bluetooth Data Reception

V. CONCLUSION
The paper suggests the new method of controlling the terrain
vehicles using the high end mobile phones. The touch less
method of controlling is found to be best way of controlling. The
mobile robot was made and it is controlled with a Samsung
Galaxy 3 which supports Android applications. The project can
be extended to develop to the robots for military missions or for
spy bots. The controlling method also has a future in the toy
market, since the Smartphone is becoming more and more
common.

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[5] Christian Gehrmann, Bluetooth Security White Paper, Bluetooth SIG
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[6] H-Bridge IC L298 datasheet
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[11]Gyula Mester, Sensor Based Control of Autonomous Wheeled Mobile
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Fig.9.Mobile Robot with NI WLS 9163

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