Use Raspberry Pi to Create Obstacle Avoiding Robot Chassis

Raspberry Pi is quite suitable for robot creation.  Its GPIO pins could be used to control the motors and sensors, and itself could work as a server, and get controlled via Internet.

The Plan

I am going to create a robot chassis, which could automatically avoid obstacle on the ground. Here is my plan:

Hardware Assembling

I bought a 4WD chassis kit from Internet.  After assembling the kit, I got a 295mm x 150mm x 40mm chassis with 4 DC motors installed.  The motors have built-in low gears and the actual speed is about 50 rpm, which is slow enough to avoid the calibration for the speed of each wheel.  The 4 wheels have very soft tires, which improve the road holding, thus the chassis could get along on the slope.

I will use a 7.4V Li-Po battery pack (2S) to power the entire chassis.  In order to obtain 5V to power Raspberry Pi, I need a UBEC, which works like voltage regular but has much higher performance.  UBEC is widely used by RF models, and has many types.  In my case a 5V/3A UBEC is good enough.Use Raspberry Pi to Create Obstacle Avoiding Robot Chassis

Please notice that, using a 3A UBEC doesn’t mean you could really get 3A current in reality.  The actual current that could be provided also limited by the Li-Po battery.  When choosing the battery pack, please pay attention to its C rating value.  What is C rating?  C rating is a measurement for charge and discharge rates for battery, and 1C means 1 time the rated mAh capacity of the battery.  Say you have 500mAh battery, then 1C means it could be charged/discharged with 500mA, while 2C means 1,000mA.  My battery pack is 5,000mAh, 20-30C discharge, so it could provide up to 15A current.  So in my case, the UBEC could really output 3A current.

The GPIO pin on Raspberry Pi can output signal but it is not capable to drive the DC motors.  So I will need the motor driving board, which could be done by using a L298N IC. You can buy some ready-to-go driving boards from Internet, but I will just create a small board to do the job.  The basic circuit diagram is shown below:

It is very simple and it can work without other components. If A1=1 and A2=0, motor A will go forward.  If A1=0 and A2=1, motor A will go backward.  If A1=A2, motor A will stop.  B1, B2 just have the same behavior.

I can use two L298N ICs to control 4 DC motors, but it is not necessary in my case.  The motor speed is quite low (by using the built-in gears), and the speed difference between motors could be ignored.  So I could connect the two motors on the same side parallelly, and use only one L298N IC to drive the 4 motors (two groups).

I used a 3cm x 7cm universal PCB to finish the wiring:

When the driving board get powered, it will draw quite a lot current at the first moment, and may cause the Raspberry Pi reboot (if you use the same power supply for both). To avoid this, a 100uF capacity is used between VCC and GND.  The L298N IC is not soldered but plug into a modified IC slot.  The +5V will be taken from the Raspberry Pi.

The connectors in green are for the motors (group A and B), while the connectors in blue are for power supply (+7.4V and +5V).  I installed the driving board into the chassis.  The UBEC is also connected to the +7.4V connector, so it can generate +5V to power Raspberry.  Here I have to solder a micro-USB plug on the output of UBEC, so it could connect to Raspberry Pi.  The +5V needed by the driving board will be taken from the +5V pin on Raspberry Pi.

An ultrasound sensor is used to detect obstacle.  It has four pins: VCC, Trig, Echo, and GND. To initialize the sensor, a pulse (at least 10us) should be sent to the Trig pin.  After that we could wait and measure the width of the pulse on the Echo pin.  The wider the pulse is, the longer distance is between the sensor and the object.

Measuring the distance of object in front of the chassis is not enough, as we need to define the strategy to make the chassis turn left or right.  Hence the sensor should not be fixed on the chassis, instead it should be able to “look around” and face to different directions in front of the chassis.  So I solder the sensor on a small PCB and then fix that PCB on a servo, which will then be mounted on the chassis. Use Raspberry Pi to Create Obstacle Avoiding Robot Chassis Schematic That small PCB also converts the output on Echo pin from 5V to 3.3V, by using two divider resistances.  I need to do so because the GPIO pins on Raspberry Pi is working on 3.3V bias, while the Echo pin on the sensor could output 5V (as we powered it with 5V from Raspberry Pi). The plastic seat of the servo is made with my 3D printer.  The servo could be SG-90 or other models that have similar size.

The servo’s signal line is connected to the GPIO 18 pin on Raspberry Pi, which is the only one that could generate PWM signal with hardware.  You may wonder if it is safe to drive servo directly with the GPIO pin, the answer is positive.  For Raspberry Pi, the recommended current for each GPIO pin is 3mA, and the maximum current is 16mA.  While the servo’s signal line, will only draw about 0.02mA (i.e. 20uA) current, which is safe enough.

Here is how to wire the 7 used GPIO pins:

 

 

For more detail: Use Raspberry Pi to Create Obstacle Avoiding Robot Chassis


About The Author

Ibrar Ayyub

I am an experienced technical writer holding a Master's degree in computer science from BZU Multan, Pakistan University. With a background spanning various industries, particularly in home automation and engineering, I have honed my skills in crafting clear and concise content. Proficient in leveraging infographics and diagrams, I strive to simplify complex concepts for readers. My strength lies in thorough research and presenting information in a structured and logical format.

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