Automatic Duster Machine

Automatic Duster Machine S.Joshibaamali And K.Geetha Priya 3 rd Year, Computer Science Department,Veltech High-Tech Dr.RR Dr.SR Engineering College,Chennai,India 3 rd Year, Computer Science Department,Veltech High-Tech Dr.RR Dr.SR Engineering College,Chennai,India Abstract- automatic duster machine is a machine which can clean a whiteboard or blackboard automatically with a press of a button. The machine can operate in three selectable operating modes. In the first mode, it cleans the left side of the board. In the second mode it cleans the right side of the board. In the third mode it cleans the whole area of the board. This machine uses two stepper motors to move the duster in horizontal (Xaxis) and vertical (Y-axis) directions to cover the whole whiteboard area. A linear motor is used to lift the duster up or down on the whiteboard. An Infrared transceiver is used to detect the X-axis motor movement so that the duster can be moved accordingly. Four limit switches are used to detect the boundary of the whiteboard. A dspic30f401 microcontroller which was programmed in C language is used as the main controller in the machine. I. INTRODUCTION When we said teaching and learning process we will focus on teacher and student, who are person that delivering and receiving information and knowledge. How do they deliver their knowledge to student? Nowadays, there are many method which teachers can use to deliver their knowledge such as computer, note given by lecture or teacher and whiteboard or blackboard as medium to deliver the information to student. Until now many schools and universities still used whiteboard and blackboard as medium to deliver information to student. Thus, many developments or methods of cleaning whiteboard or blackboard were fabricated. Therefore some idea has appeared in my mind to develop the machine of cleaning whiteboard that called automatic Duster Machine. This machine will develop to overcome some problems that happen in school or university Problem Associated with Whiteboard The increase in numbers of institutions and schools shows a sign of an increase of students entering their school every year. Sometimes the number of teachers in a school is not enough that will cause teachers to teach four or five times a day. This may lead to fatigue in teachers. They had to write the information that they want to convey to their students over and over again. A fix schedule in one day also can cause a fatigue to the teachers in cleaning all information that they write on the whiteboard. Sometimes, teachers or students they often forgot to clean the whiteboard after the class sessions. When the next class session is start teachers will complain when the board is not cleaned. Another problem is the mysterious loss of duster. This problem always happens to the primary school and secondary school. This will cause problem to clean a whiteboard. Lastly, the problem is the effect of permanent marker on human health. Permanent marker will affect someone whose has allergic reaction, possible ink poisoning and side effects from inhaling ink fumes. This is because the permanent ink is made from organic solvent. There are many solutions to prevent this problem from happening. One of these solution the automatic XY duster machine that is proposed II. OBJECTIVE There are two main objectives of doing this project. First objective is to design a low cost and user friendly whiteboard or blackboard cleaner machine which can erase the board with a single key pressed. This machine will provide with three selectable modes to erase the whiteboard with only a single key. This machine was created as a convenience to the user to erase the blackboard. Second objective is to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of the movement of duster machine. This purpose of this objective is to make the movement of this machine accurate although has been used many time. Another purpose of this objective is to make the machine work faster and smoothly. This aims to prevent users from bored waiting for the cleaning process to be done. It is also to avoid wasting time there. III. SCOPE This project will be carried out by developing a prototype of XY Duster Machine. The scopes of the development prototype are as follow: 11

1) This machine will use a whiteboard as a prototype. So the area of dimension that it will use is 600mm x 450mm. 2) The usage of gripper. This gripper used is a simple one for holding the duster. 3) iii. Limitation on movement of duster. Movement of duster will move in two way of direction. Duster can move in horizontal (X-axis) and vertical (Y-axis) directions. 4) iv. Sensors are used to know the location of the duster. First part is mechanism of the robot. Its consist a base with two wheels which ride on the whiteboard track. This base it use to move on the X-axis of the whiteboard. To make a robot move in Y-axis direction robot arm slider was constructed. These sliders move the robot in up and down directions on Y-axis. At the end of the arm the duster is attached to do the cleaning process. IV. LITERATURE REVIEW A. Humanoid Robot Learns To Clean A Whiteboard This humanoid robot was created by Italian and Japanese collaboration between Italian Institute of Technology and Tokyo City University. The robot was concept by the imitation learning. This robot has a different type of control that is upper body control and lower body control. In upper body control it designs used the concept of kinesthetic learning. This concept will be used at the robot arm. Same with the lower body of robot, but it use to stabilized the position of the robot to keep maintain the robot when upper body doing it work. The ankle and hip of the robot will react with the motion of upper body to keep the balance of robot. Fig:2 Whiteboard Erasing Robot The second part is robot vision. This robot use webcam and computer base control station that located at the opposite side of whiteboard. This vision use to find place of text written and make sure the robot clean at that place. The vision capture with a webcam will be processed with vision software, Robo Realm. This software use to find center of gravity of text. The image color will be converted into negative image, black and white using gray-scale filter Once the center gravity of text was defined, it will convert the center gravity of text into coordinate plane. Then using basic math program, it will tell the robot which location is must move using motor command C. Whiteboard Cleaning Mobile Robot Fig:1 Humanoid Robot B. Whiteboard Erasing Robot It is an autonomously robot, that can erase a written text on a whiteboard completely autonomously. Without human interface, the robot easily finds the text on whiteboard with the process that were programmed. There are three cases of study on how the robots function. First is method for the robot to find the written text on whiteboard. Next step is defining a way for mechanism to move the text written. Last step is to enable a robot to erase the text. So in the first step robot is to find the written text on whiteboard. This step was divided into two parts. Whiteboard cleaning mobile robot was fabricate by Stefan Diewald, VMI, TU Munchen. The concept of cleaning task is the same with whiteboard erasing robot that were an autonomously robot that clean text on their own without human interface. But the different between these two projects is the mechanism Mobile robot used the suction concept to make the robot attached to the whiteboard, different with whiteboard erasing robot that used two parts of motion X-axis and Y-axis. The mechanism of mobile robot is quite simple, but the suction concept that make we difficult to build. Suction concept is also noisier when mobile robot doing its task 12

For a vision part, the concept is the same with whiteboard erasing robot but the software that they used is different. This project used the Robot Operating System as the software to process the visual. Fig 3: Mobile Robot V. DUSTER MACHINE : As we know that duster machines were widely available but rarely use in all school and university. For example JalanPasar.Net and Space Jo Corporation Product of Taiwan have already developed the duster machine but the usage of these machines are not familiar to school and university VII. METHODOLOGY This chapter will discuss on the methodology employed and consideration to be taken account for this project. This chapter is the important part of this project to realize the Automatic Duster Machine. It begins with the process flowchart that will be showed in the next section followed by mechanism structure, circuit design, and software that will be used. Before this step begins, some research had be done on it. The selection of part is most important to start the project. What kind of part or materials suitable for the design of the mechanism must be determined. This chapter will also describe the selection of brain for this machine which is a microcontroller and the actuators part of machine which is motor VIII. HARDWARE CONSTRUCTION Construction of mechanism part of duster machine is the most important. Without a good or suitable material it will cause inaccuracy of movement of the machine. Mechanism part will be divided into two steps: 1) Designing process of the mechanical parts using Solid Work 2010. 2) Construction of the machine accordingly to the design. Before construction of XY duster machine begin, the requirement shape of the machine need to be designed. By using hand sketch and converting the sketch into 3D sketch using suitable sketch software.the proper dimension is selected as accurate as possible to prevent the error in the construction of XY duster machine. IX. DESIGNING THE MACHINE PART Fig 4: Automatic Duster Machine VI. STEPPER MOTOR A stepper motor is a permanent magnet or variable reluctance DC motor that were designed for positioning. Some of characteristic performances of stepper motor are rotation in directions clockwise and anti-clockwise, precision angular incremental changes, repeatability in motion, a holding torque at zero speed, and capability for digital control In designing step, the machine were divided into 3 important part: 1) X-axis base of machine 2) Y-axis base of machine 3) Gripper for duster Two type of construction stepper motor are unipolar and bipolar stepper motor. All type of stepper motor has same basic working principle and controlling the step of stepper motor 13

Construction for gripper duster is quite simple it just needs a linear motor that is attached at base of Y- axis. Linear motor will be attached to the pulley with a string to make it move up and down X. CIRCUIT DESIGN A. Microcontroller Circuit: In this project, microcontroller that will be used is dspic30f4011.the figure below the schematic of voltage regulator and microcontroller. Voltage regulator is used to convert supply voltage into 5V to the microcontroller. Fig 6: Voltage Regulator Schematic Fig 5:Isometric View After finished designed in Solid work, the process to convert it to real implementation must be done. All material has been selected to make the Automatic duster Machine. dspic30f4011 have thirty pin connections for input and output. So in this case switch1 until switch 7 will act as input for microcontroller. Same also like input for infrared sensor acted as input for microcontroller. The other connection were act as output of microcontroller. Automatic Duster Machine is divided into three important parts of construction. In first part the base or way of X-axis movement is constructed. So the length required to construct this base is 0.6 meter equally with the width of whiteboard. The nut, washer, spring washer and bolt are used to join or attach the materials. On top of the whiteboard the aluminum U channel as a track for stepper motor in X-axis movement is constructed. Aluminum rod will be attached to PE rod to avoid the stepper motor running out of the track In Y-axis construction two stepper motors were used. One was attached to movement in x- axis one more for move duster in Y-axis direction. That motor will attached to two ways roller. With the base of two aluminum rod attached to the base of linear motor to complete the design in Y-axis. Fig 7:Microcontroller dspic30f4011 Schematic B. Stepper Motor Driver Circuit The stepper motor used is a 6 wire unipolar stepper motor. There are many ways to 14

interface with stepper motor controller, out of the most used interfaces are: 1) Interface using L293D H-Bridge Motor Driver Interface using ULN2003/2004 Darlington Arrays 2) Interface using SD02B 2A Stepper Motor Driver some pin in motor driver must be controlled with microcontroller. Microcontroller requires generating pulse and controlling the direction. PULSE pin is being connected to pin RE1 and RE4. This pin function to generate pulse using compare mode. DIR pin was connected to pin RE0 and RE3. These pins function for giving direction of stepper motor in clockwise or anticlockwise. EN pin was connected to pin RE2 and RE5. These pins function is to enable the motor driver. C. Infrared Sensor (Ir) Circuit This project uses a pair of infrared (IR) sensor. This sensor is use to detect the change of color white in black. The changes of color function to know the location of stepper motor in X-axis movement. If the IR sensor detects the black line the output is high and the output is low if IR detects the white spot. XI. MACHINE OPERATION Automatic Duster Machine operates automatically in three selectable modes with press of button. First mode of machine is to clean all area of whiteboard. In second and third mode is the area of whiteboard was divided into two parts that cleaning process. Second mode will clean in left area of whiteboard and third mode is clean in right area of whiteboard The limits of movement machine in X-axis and Y-axis is controlled by limit switch. Two limit switches were located in left and right whiteboard for limitation in X-axis. Another two limit switches were located in up and down of base Y-axis to controlled the movement of duster. Infrared sensor also uses to detect the x-axis location. XII. TIME OF CLEANING Time for cleaning process is one of important factor that must be considered. This result will affect the user. If it takes too long time to clean the whiteboard it will make the user boring to wait the machine finish all the work. So Automatic duster machine was designed to operate similar to like human work time XIII. SPEEDS VERSUS TORQUE As we know stepper motor is in good condition when operate in low speed with the high torque. Relation between speed and torque is inversely proportional. As increase of speed torque will be low and also decrease the speed, torque will be high, so this relation is important to get the actual speed that can accommodate the load. XIV. BENEFITS This topic will discuss the benefit of XY Duster Machine to user. Every development of product must give some feedback to the user. This product was fabricated to help people especially teachers and lectures. So the benefit of XY Duster Machine is: 1) Reduce tiredness of teachers. 2) To avoid a whiteboard is left in dirty condition when a class finished. 3) To automate the whiteboard cleaning process 4) to avoid the mysterious of lost a duster XV. DISCUSSIONS After all analysis has been done through experiment and results were collected, some important thing must be highlighting trough experiment have been done. Firstly is movement of stepper motor. From this observation, some problems has occurred in X- axis stepper motor. Tire in x-axis stepper motor have been stuck in the end of track. It makes the movement not smooth until it reaches the end of track. This is because the mechanical construction by human hand is not pretty well in cutting the material or measured the length of material. Hence the problem occurred when testing the machine. Second thing must be considered is the noise of machine. As we know stepper motor produce higher noise than other motor. It s not suitable in class condition. It will disturb learning session. So to avoid this problem happen we can replace stepper motor to another DC motor. But if the motor changed it will change the design, programming and maybe the control of positioning motor not as accurate as stepper motor. Time to finish cleaning the whiteboard must also be highlighted in this case. As what have been discussed above about the time to clean the whiteboard it take forty five second as average of process cleaning. It maybe takes too long cleaning process. It will cause the teacher and student boring to wait the machine finished the cleaning process. So for the future development we must reduce the time of cleaning 15

whiteboard so that not take too long to clean a whiteboard. XVI. CONCLUSIONS In new era of technology, people want something new in their life. They want every single thing they look in front of their life look sophisticated. People want something that can improve their lifestyle and help they do their job by use of robot or machine. That is why development of machine and robot nowadays quite popular and faster in marketing. So to help and give benefit to humankind the research and development of Automatic Duster Machine is an alternative machine that can help lecturer, teacher and student to keep their duty clean a whiteboard by using this machine. In this project, there were some problems that occurred and must be solved to make it perfect. The problem occurs from the design is the efficiency of movement duster machine. In order to make this machine in high performance and good condition many factor need to be considered. Development of this machine must be tough form the mechanical design, electronic design and how to control it. All factor of measurement of design must be accurate as can. In electronic design the best way to controlled the machine and is using of microcontroller. This microcontroller act as brain of the machine and make the machine is more intelligence. In this project PIC was use as microcontroller for this project As conclusion, an automatic whiteboard cleaning machine was designed and fabricated using low cost material and with user friendly interface. This machine can potentially be used in class rooms to assist the teachers in keeping the whiteboards cleaned. XVII. FUTURE DEVELOPMENT Even though, automatic duster machine successfully fabricated but this machine needs some improvement to add to make this machine in high performance and comfortable to the user. Further research must be done in order to make the machine meet the specification and requirement for commercialized purpose. These are some idea for the future development of Automatic Duster Machine. 1) Redesign the mechanical structure -- in this project the design more like a prototype for this machine. To make it become reality this machine must be redesign to make it comfortable and able to apply in real world. 2) High current supply i.e. 12V 4A this machine only used 12V2A to operate all the entire circuit and stepper motor on the hardware. It required using two power supplies to make this machine work. 3) Operate in manual mode manual mode, it is an advantage when user can control the movement Duster machine by using wireless joystick user can erase the area of white board they want by control it. 4) Operate in schedule this machine can be set up the time. It can operate automatically when we set up the time we want it work. 5) Eye of machine we can make this machine operate with detection of dirty in whiteboard. Machine knows the location of dirty and erases it automatically.. 16

REFERENCE [1] PCB drilling machine (UTM 2011), Nurfaizal [2] http://blog.ub.ac.id/teguh/2011/05/22/stepper-motorinterfacing-withmicrocontrollers/3 [3] CytronTechnologiesSdnBhd. www.cytron.com.my [4] Upper-body Kinesthetic Teaching of a Free-standing Humanoid Robot. Kormushev, P., Nenchev, D.N., Calinon, S., and Caldwell, D.G., IEEE Intl. Conf. on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2011), pp. 3970-3975, 2011. [5] http://ideaprojektahunakhir.blogspot.com/2010/10/projeksmart-white-boardcleaner.html [6] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmvqbdrtl_i http://forums.trossenrobotics.com/showthread.php?4546- Whiteboard-ErasingRobot http://www.cncroutersource.com/stepper-vs-servo 17