Surveillance Robot Project - Methods for Building Cellphone Operated Robot

I am a final year B. Tech student and I am making a robotic car operated by cellphone. I want to add the feature of surveillance to my robot, i.e., the robot can see and may record the data of the place around it. Well it is my idea. I don’t know how it should be done. I wish to add my robot to personal computer. The image of location will be sent to PC connected to robot. I am doing this for an industrial robotics project. Please help me out with it.

So you are planning to control the bot using your mobile phone. It is a nice idea and why don’t you use a mobile camera for getting the video input.

First Method for Building Cellphone Operated Robot (Simple One)

You need a cellphone with a high definition camera with a bluetooth and a laptop with a bluetooth and now just google for WWIGO and download the WWIGO software through which you can use your mobile camera as a wireless webcam. Now interface both of them via bluetooth and have fun with your robot.

Second Method for Building Cellphone Operated Robot (Geek Stuff...Try being a geek)

You need a cellphone with a good camera with WiFi and a laptop having WiFi. Download the WWIGO software and use it. Interface both of them using WiFi and have fun. You need to create an ad hoc network in your laptop and should make your cellphone join the network. Now if you want to have more fun, purchase a router too and create a WiFi network and make your bot work in the WiFi network. Well if you want to do the image processing stuff and install MATLAB (Language of Technical Computing) and change the webcam default (laptop camera) to the connected webcam (your mobile camera). Now grab the images and do some modifications, scaling, sharpening and so on. If you want to do some processing but don’t want to waste time by working on MATLAB, rather want to prepare for placements and stuff or want to move around with your girlfriend, then download the software called RoboRealm and just google for that and you will get the link. Install the RoboRealm software in the laptop change the image input in RoboRealm from the default one (laptop web camera) to your cellphone’s camera and that is it. Now you will get lots of things to do with processing there.

Third Method for Making Cellphone Operated Robot (Costly One):

If you want your robot to just take a look around without recording it, simplest way would be using an AVR Cam ( if you are using an AVR microcontroller). Costs around 100 dollars. You can record this thing with a bluetooth firefly module and directly connect this thing with a PC. This would work in the first shot, but may cost you a lot. But, keep this thing in mind and this gives really poor quality pictures. The other way out is mounting a laptop on the bot and using a webcam to record the data. And, as an improvement, you can attach the Cam to 2 servos/steppers, which rotate in 2 different axes and record a panoramic view of the environment. To respond to certain environmental conditions, image processing is one good option as mentioned above. For that, you need a really fast processor on the bot for example a lappy.

Have fun with technology. All the best