University Library Robot Phase#1

Let's Make Robots
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it is required to build a line tracking robot for the university library. This Robot job is to return back the books to their shelves. in this phase the robot is not expected to bring the books from the shelves also it is not required to put the book in its correct place inside the shelf. it is required to take the book and lay it on its correct shelf then the librarian should put each book in its place.

Each book must have bar-code sticker contains the book ID code (or ISBN code) in the library. Also each shelf must have its bar-code label.

the robot will have omni bar-code reader. so when you put the book inside the robot container, the robot will read the book ID code. this should be done at the librarian office, then the robot will follow the line on the ground that will direct the robot around the library shelves. During his way the robot will check every shelf code to decide which shelf is the correct one. after finding the correct shelf, the robot will stop and a special mechanic arm will take the book and put it on the shelf. after that the robot will came back to the librarian office.

the robot is expected to accept more than one book (10 for example) and have two containers. one for the books to be distributed and the other for the books that could not be distributed. also the shelves maybe at different heights starting from 25cm to 250cm.

 

the robot must have obstacle  avoidance system and people avoidance system.

it looks nice but little complicated isn't it.

welcom for all ideas comments and suggestions.

 

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Hi, sounds like an

Hi, sounds like an interesting project! :slight_smile: Hope too see it in progress soon on LMR! :slight_smile:

I think a barcode scanner is really nice way to identify the book, but not shelf. In my opinion it is much better to hardcode shelves into memory. Or even make it RF enabled, so each time it accepts a book, it can ask library computer for directions where should that book go.

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i agree with you

i agree with you barcode is good for books but it maybe not good for shelves. i really don’t want to change the old identification system of the library. i want to keep every thing as it is, only adding new features.

storing the shelves Information into memory is definitely good idea. it will speedup the process and will increase efficiency.

for example, if using shelves with barcodes consider a book in the last shelf then the robot should walk through all shelves to find the correct one. however, if the shelfs codes are stored in the robot memory the process will be much faster. i think we must put this point into consideration.

i was thinking about tree hierarchy to speed up the process 

about the RF enabled, i did not get the idea.

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Radio frequency. You can

Radio frequency. You can use, say, XBee modules to enable robot to communicate with library computer. This way you will not need to update robots software with new shelves map, if, for instance, they are repositioned or added new shelves, etc. Upon reading book’s barcode robot will ask computer where to to place it.