The goal of this project is to design and construct a fully autonomous vehicle which will be steered by the NAO robot. The main components of this project are the sensors, the microcontroller, the NAO robot, and the vehicle. The NAO robot should be able to steer from a panel of four buttons. The four buttons will consit of a forward and backward driving button and a left and right steering button. The sensors will detect objects in it paths and openings, such as hallways and doorways, and send its data to the microcontroller. The microcontroller will take the sensor data and make a decision whether to drive forward or backward or to turn left or right and send its decision to the NAO robot through a hardwire connection. The NAO robot will then take the direction from the microcontroller and carry out the appropiate motion.
For the scope of the project, we plan to test the completed project inside Armstrong Hall at TCNJ. The vehicle should be able to navigate the hallways and avoid any obstacles that get in its way. We plan to teach the NAO robot how to read April Tags and place them outside classrooms so the NAO robot can identify which rooms it is passing.