Auto target tracking robot design based on smartphone

This paper describes a robot tracking control design based on a smartphone using a commercial microprocessor. The system hardware consists of four major parts: an Android smartphone with an embedded camera, a Microchip microprocessor, a motor driver circuit and an Attacknid robot. First, an image of the surrounding environment is captured by the high definition camera embedded in the smartphone. The target is then recognized from the image using an algorithm developed in Android OS and OpenCV library. Third, motion control and laser activation strategies are achieved using the proposed algorithm implemented in Java. Fourth, the motion commands are delivered to the microchip processor through a USB interface. Finally, the processor produces a pulse width modulation (PWM) voltage to control the robot’s motion and activate the laser diode according commands sent from the smart phone. Experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of this proposed architecture.