1. ABSTRACT

This project is based on Automobile Surveillance Robot with Camera Interfacing as suggested by Prof. P. U. Chavan and Prof. P. P. Bhujbal .The objective of this project is to design and build a manually controlled wireless surveillance robot.

The main purpose of the project is to be able to roam around in a given environment while transmitting back real time data (video) to the PC. This real time data can be then used by the controller (human) to control the robot around.

Also,the surveillance robot must be compact and self contained with wireless transmission of data.

2. Literature Review

With the advanced technologies, it is possible to make and implement a wireless surveillance robot which will prove beneficial for surveillance purpose in day to day life.

Our aim here is to design a surveillance robot that can be controlled manually using a laptop/PC. The robot will consist of a video camera which will provide live video feed on the desktop and the controller will manually control the robot using this live video by giving commands like forward, left, right, etc. Since the main purpose of the robot is surveillance we have named the project as Automobile Surveillance Robot with Camera Interfacing .

To start working on the surveillance robot we have gone through IEEE papers on the various surveillance techniques. We have gone through the magazines like Electronics for you and Power Electronics. We searched for the new technologies being developed in the field of surveillance on various websites

The group conducted a literature survey among other students, faculty, family and friends, and visited few companies, so as to identify the areas in our project from the design stage itself.

Majority of the people in the survey came up with similar suggestions /requirements as noted below:

Cost efficiency.

Durability (Due to every day usage).

Intelligent interfacing

Real time data (video) transmission

2.1. Problem Statement

There are number of places in which human intervention is not possible. Also security of homes and commercial organizations is of prime concern due to robbery and other malpractices. Surveillance finds a number of applications in industries as well.

3. INTRODUCTION

Robots are being used in variety of industrial applications for various activities like pick and place, painting, assembling of subsystems and in hazardous places for material handling etc.

Robots are becoming more and more intelligent as technology advances in the areas of CPU speed, sensors, memories etc. And there are ever demanding applications even in defense. With the rapid growth in camera technology, more and more intelligent devices or systems have been embedded into it for service, security and entertainment, including distributed computer systems, telescopes, manipulators and mobile robots.

The increasing need for automated surveillance of various environments, such as airports, warehouses, production plants, etc. has stimulated the development of intelligent systems based on mobile sensors. Differently from traditional non-mobile surveillance devices, those based on mobile robots are still in their initial stage of development, and many issues are currently open for investigation (Everett, H., 2003), (DehuaI, Z. et al. 2007). The use of robots significantly expands the potential of surveillance systems, which can evolve from the traditional passive role, in which the system can only detect events and trigger alarms, to active surveillance, in which a robot can be used to interact with the environment, with humans or with other robots for more complex cooperative actions (Burgard, W. et al. 2000), (Vig, L. & Adams, J.A., 2007).

Wireless video surveillance is an important research area in the commercial sector as well. Technology has reached a stage where mounting cameras to capture video imagery is cheap, but finding available human resources to sit and watch that imagery is expensive. Surveillance cameras are already prevalent in commercial establishments, with camera output being recorded to tapes that are either rewritten periodically or stored in video archives. At the same time web camera connected to the microcontroller keeps on capturing what is going on there at the host place and saves it into the computer.

In the last years, several worldwide projects have attempted to develop mobile security platforms. A notable example is the Mobile Detection Assessment and Response System (MDARS) (Everett, H. & Gage, D.W., 1999). The aim of this project was that of developing a multi- robot system able to inspect warehouses and storage sites, identifying anomalous situations, such as flooding and fire, detect intruders, and determine the status of inventoried objects using specialized RF transponders. In the RoboGuard project (Birk, A. & Kenn, H., 2001), a semi-autonomous mobile security device uses a behavior-oriented architecture for navigation, while sending video streams to human watch-guards. The Airport Night Surveillance Expert Robot (ANSER) (Capezio, F. et al. 2005) consists of an Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) using non-differential GPS unit for night patrols in civilian airports and similar wide areas, interacting with a fixed supervision station under control of a human operator. A Robotic Security Guard (Duckett, T. et al. 2004) for remote surveillance of indoor environments has been also the focus of a research project at the Learning Systems Laboratory of AASS. The objective of this project was that of developing a mobile robot platform able to patrol a given environment, acquire and update maps, keep watch over valuable objects, recognize people, discriminate intruders from known persons, and provide remote human operators with a detailed sensory analysis.

We introduce a surveillance robot having mobile capabilities which can be controlled manually using a PC console application, i.e., Visual Basic (VB). The on board cameras provides real time transmission of live video on the desktop depending on which the controller gives the suitable command to move the robot in the given environment. Going wireless reduces the cost of cabling and gives it the flexibility to approach the areas where the wired robots cannot reach.

4. BLOCK DIAGRAM

Fig. 4. 1. Block Diagram of Surveillance Robot

4.1. Block Diagram (Working) :

A 5V supply is given to the AVR controller to ON the surveillance robot. Also, a 9V battery is connected to the wireless camera.

When the camera gets on we get a live video feed on the desktop.

Using this live video feed the controller gives various commands such as forward, left, right, stop, etc using Visual Basic PC console application.

These commands are transferred wirelessly over wireless RF 433 Mhz link.

Upon receiving the commands from the controller the robot moves in the given direction using two DC motors.

5. BLOCK DIAGRAM DESCRIPTION

5.1. RF Transmission/Reception

RFrefers toradio frequency, the mode of communication for wireless technologies of all kinds, including cordless phones, radar, ham radio,GPS, and radio and television broadcasts. In our project, we have successfully implemented RF technology for data transmission as well as reception.

RF waves are electromagnetic waves which propagate at the speed of light, or 186,000 miles per second (300,000 km/s). Thefrequenciesof RF waves, however, are slower than those of visible light, making RF waves invisible to the human eye.

The frequency of a wave is determined by its oscillations or cycles per second. One cycle is one hertz (Hz); 1,000 cycles is 1 kilohertz (KHz); 1 million cycles is 1 megahertz (MHz); and 1 billion cycles is 1 gigahertz (GHz). A station on the AM dial at 980, for example, broadcasts using a signal that oscillates 980,000 times per second, or has a frequency of 980 KHz. A station a little further down the dial at 710 broadcasts using a signal that oscillates 710,000 times a second, or has a frequency of 710 KHz. With a slice of the RF pie licensed to each broadcaster, the RF range can be neatly divided and utilized by multiple parties.

5.2. Liquid Crystal Display (LCD)

Most of the projects with the any microcontroller (8051/PIC/AVR/ARM) require some form of display. In market various displays are available like 7-segment, 5*7 matrix LED and LCD, bar graph, LCD, etc. Its important for deciding the required display set for our project. Selection of display depends on various factors like power consumption, ambient light conditions, surrounding temperature, visibility from long distance, total information to be display, cost of display, circuit/lines required for display interfacing, etc.

The most common way to accomplish this is with the LCD (Liquid Crystal Display). LCDs have become a cheap and easy way to get text display for an embedded system.

Following figure shows the basic pin diagram of 16*2 LCD display:-

Fig.5.2.1. LCD 16*2

In our system we prefer to choose a LCD instead of LED or 7-Seg display because of the following reasons:

1) It has the ability to display numbers, characters and graphics whereas LED displays are limited to numbers and a few characters.

2) There is refreshing controller in the LCD which reduces the overhead of the CPU.

3) Ease of programming for characters and graphics.

We have used the 16 by 2 LCD that means that it can display the two lines containing 16 characters each. The Pixel Matrix is of 7 by 5 pixels that are each character can be displayed using 7 columns of the pixels and 5 rows of the pixels.

To control the operation of the LCD three control signals are used they are as follows,

1) Enable (EN): It is used to enable the display to perform any operation with it.

2) R/W (Read/Write): This signal indicates to LCD processor that the operations being performed is read operation or write operation.

If it is 1 it indicates the read operation and if it is 0 it indicates the write operation.

3) RS (Register Select) : There are two types of registers as command register and data register. To select one of these registers RS signal is used.

If it is 0 the command register will be get selected and when it is 1 the data registerwill be selected.

There are 8 lines for the data transfer between micro controller and LCD.

5.3. DC Motors

DC motors are used to physically drive the application as per the requirement provided in software. The dc motor works on 12V. To drive a dc motor, we need a dc motor driver called L293D. This dc motor driver is capable of driving 2 dc motors at a time. In order to protect the dc motor from a back EMF generated by the dc motor while changing the direction of rotation, the dc motor driver have an internal protection suit. We can also provide the back EMF protection suit by connecting 4 diode configurations across each dc motor.

5.4. Wireless Camera

5.4.1. Color CMOS wireless

Camera apparatus: 1/3,1/4 picture sensor System: PAL/CCIR NTSC/ETA Validity pixel: 628x582 NTSC: 510X492 Output power: 50Mw/200Mw/300Mw Transmission signal: Picture , Sound Deliver the Distance: 50-100/200-300M Voltage: +9V Current: 200mA/300mA Power Consumption: =