EAI International Conference for Research, Innovation and Development for Africa

Research Article

The Development and Application of a Smart Ultrasonic Sensor IP-Core in a Mobile Autonomous Robot

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  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/eai.20-6-2017.2275890,
        author={Liberty Matauranwa and Thanks Marisa and Peter Manyere and Emanuel Rashayi},
        title={The Development and Application of a Smart Ultrasonic Sensor IP-Core in a Mobile Autonomous Robot},
        proceedings={EAI International Conference for Research, Innovation and Development for Africa},
        publisher={EAI},
        proceedings_a={ACRID},
        year={2018},
        month={4},
        keywords={: ultrasonic sensor; soft ip core; fpga; i2c; system-on-chip; autonomous mobile robot},
        doi={10.4108/eai.20-6-2017.2275890}
    }
    
  • Liberty Matauranwa
    Thanks Marisa
    Peter Manyere
    Emanuel Rashayi
    Year: 2018
    The Development and Application of a Smart Ultrasonic Sensor IP-Core in a Mobile Autonomous Robot
    ACRID
    EAI
    DOI: 10.4108/eai.20-6-2017.2275890
Liberty Matauranwa1,*, Thanks Marisa1, Peter Manyere1, Emanuel Rashayi2
  • 1: Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Zimbabwe
  • 2: Department of Electrical Engineering
*Contact email: libertym01@gmail.com

Abstract

Autonomous robots are being proposed as the future drives of industry, transport and defense sectors. This paper describes the design and development of a soft IP core for an ultrasonic sensor on an Autonomous Mobile Robot. The IP core is implemented on the Xilinx Spartan 3 FPGA as part of a System-on-Chip control system for the robot. The ultrasonic sensor IP core is utilized in a Drive-by-Wire application in which a line of robots follow a lead robot along a marked highway. As the robots motion is based exclusively on sensor data, IP cores are developed for the robot smart sensors and actuators. In this paper we focus on the development of the ultrasonic ranging sensor IP core, its properties and how it interfaces with the robot hardware. Our target applications are in industry and agriculture.