Bluetooth Communication Between Arduino and Android Smartphone

A Bluetooth connection was established successfully between Arduino and an Android smartphone. The video below shows the result of a simple mobile app that was created to control LED wirelessly over Bluetooth connection.

I am currently in the process of creating an app for my project. Progress will be updated here as soon as I have something significant to show. 

3D Road Map

For this week, I will also be starting to build the physical road map for my project. I have found some templates that I can use for constructing paper buildings on my map here. I will also explore and look for more templates and pick from the best to make my map look as real as possible.

IR Communication

For this week, I will be exploring on the topic of IR communication as it is one of the most important components of my project. Some of the resources used include this and this.

Establishing Bluetooth Connection

The end goal of this step is to establish a Bluetooth connection between RedBot and an Android smartphone. At this point, I am just setting up the Bluetooth connection between RedBot and my laptop to get a sense of how it works. For this, I am using a tutorial that can be found here.

As for my next step, I will be working on connecting Redbot to an Android smartphone by using Bluetooth connection as well as building an simple app for my project by using App Inventor. A simple tutorial on how to do this can be found here.

Project Component Details

As mentioned before, we will be building a robot that teaches young children about traffic signs in this project. In order to build this robot, a few different components will be involved. These include the physical road map, the robot vehicle, the communication tool between the robot and traffic signs, as well as the auditory feedback provider.  Each of these components will be described in details, as shown below. 

A.    Physical Road Map 

The physical road map in this project serves as a “traffic environment” where the robot vehicle will move around on. This road map will include several components which are road (basically line where the robot vehicle can follow), traffic signs, buildings, as well as greens such as trees. We want to make this road map look as real as possible. This road map will be made by hand and the ingredients needed to make this road map include cardboard, cardstock, color papers, printed and laminated traffic signs, sticks, and glue.

B.    Robot Vehicle

The robot that we will build in this project serves as the vehicle that will move around on the road map. For this robot vehicle, we will use a RedBot (with basic components included such as micro controller, etc.) with the combination of IR array sensors to allow the functionality of line following.

C.    Communication Tool between Robot and Traffic Signs

In order to let the robot vehicle know what to react when it approaches different traffic signs, a communication tool between the robot and traffic signs is needed. In this project, we will use IR transmitters and receivers to achieve this purpose. IR transmitters will be attached on each traffic sign and IR receivers will be attached on the robot vehicle in the form of an vertical antenna. With this, the robot vehicle will be able to distinguish between different traffic signs based on different signals in pattern transmitted by each traffic sign. By being able to make that distinction, the robot vehicle will be able to react accordingly to different type of traffic signs.

D.    Auditory Feedback Provider 

In this project, we will use a smartphone to serve as an auditory feedback provider. In order to allow the robot vehicle to communicate with the smartphone, we will establish a Bluetooth connection by using a Bluetooth module. Other than serving as an auditory feedback provider, we might utilize the smartphone to display images or animations to enhance the richness of feedback provided by the robot.

Idea Selection

After a discussion with Prof. Min, we have decided to pick Idea 1 as the topic for this project, which is creating a robot that teaches kids about traffic signs. The next steps for this project are

• Writing a project proposal
• Presenting the project proposal in class
• Determining the hardware needed to build the robot
• Purchasing the hardware
• Designing the robot 

The progress of this project will be updated here accordingly once the steps above are being completed.