Application of the MyRIO Based Mobile Robot Using Vision System

Bo-Jun Yang1, Kuo-Hsien Hsia2, Kuo-Lan Su2, Evgeni Magid3

1
Graduate school Engineering Science and Technology, National Yunlin University of Science & Technology,
2
Department of Electrical Engineering, National Yunlin University of Science & Technology,
123 University Road, Section 3,Douliou, Yunlin 64002, Taiwan, R.O.C.
3
Intelligent Robotics Department, Kazan Federal University,
18 Kremlyovskaya street, Kazan 420008, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
www.yuntech.edu.tw

Abstract
The paper develops an auto mobile robotics that has the feature of image identification through a set of designed
experiments. It is used in automatic industry and the application of AGV. The main controller of mobile robot is
myRIO-1900 which is developed by America National Instruments. The inner controller is ARM Cortex-A9, it has
two I/O ports, and it adopts MXP and MSP. This device includes and integrates analogy input, analogy
output, digital I/O, LED, a button, accelerator, a set of Xilinx FPGA, processor, memory, hard disk, and
image identification processing module. It uses Tetrix and Matrix components combining with RC motor
to be an arm to solve Competition problem, and it also uses trapezoidal acceleration algorithm and PID
algorithm to control more precisely. It applies NI LabVIEW Vision Assistant to do image identification
processing to help mobile robot finish specified action.
Keywords: myRIO-1900, PID, Vision Assistant, Mobile Robots.

in science and technology, but also cultivates talented

1. Introduction
people. For example, Lego cooperated with National
With the incoming of Artificial Intelligence Era, robot Instruments (NI). With the promotion of Industry 4.0 and
education is gradually being valued. The output value of Productivity 4.0, the industry seeks to integrate
robots in Taiwan has been increasing year by year, and it intelligent automation in order to use in factory’s
is an important industry promoted by government and production and transportation. Through artificial
companies. Whether home appliances, entertainment, intelligence combines with robots, it can replace lots of
automatic robots in factory or medical care supply of human resources and provide more efficient production
seniors, all have a promising future, but compared with and transportation.
Japan and South Korea’s market, the R & D and Behind robot education, there are a lot of creative and
commercialization are slow. Robot education still has logical thinking. For example, students used to learn
great room for improvement in Taiwan. univariate quadratic equations in school, but through
Robots have become next super-tech star after computers robot education, it can let students learn the application
and Internet. All over the world are working hard to of these formulas which is far more effective. Extending
promote robot industry. Robot education has continued robot education and assisting Ministry of Education to
to take root to inspire students’ interests in this field. In promote the science and technology education
fact, robot education not only inspires children’s interests curriculum is important. As a result, children can be
©The 2020International Conference on Artificial Life and Robotics (ICAROB2020), Jan. 13-16, B-Con Plaza, Beppu, Oita, Japan

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cultivated in their childhood to face and think about

future high-tech society.

2. The Structure of System

The autonomous mobile robotics (as shown in Figure 1)
consists of three parts: positioning system, motion
control system, and image recognition system. The Fig. 1. Block diagram of IoT module.
autonomous mobile robot includes power system,
human-machine interface monitoring system, computer
vision system, motor control system, and sensor system.
The main control core is myRIO-1900 (as shown in
Figure 2), and Tetrix and Matrix are the core components.
The program is written by Labview2018 software which
is developed by National Instruments. The human- Fig. 2 myRIO-1900
machine interface monitoring, data transmission, image
vision, and motor control are all performed by National
Instruments LabVIEW2018.
The main core of myRIO controller is NI Single-Board
RIO which is developed by National Instruments (NI). It
is suitable for teaching, competition, and robot
development with Tetrix and Matrix Base set metal kits.
The embedded system of NI Single-Board RIO takes
LabVIEW as the core, it allows users to integrate motors, Fig. 3 front panel
sensor controls and creative assembly of metal kits more
easily. With the expansion board, LabVIEW software
writing programs is easier than traditional one. In
addition, the programming language is similar to C
language. The only difference is that LabVIEW
integrates programming language, interface design,
algorithms, visual development, measurement tools,
communication modes, etc. Its functionality is relatively
powerful, but its basic structure of programming
language is still based on C language. LabVIEW is easier Fig. 4 edit the programming
for users to do integration development than other
programming languages. without a programming foundation to learn than other
LabVIEW (Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation programming languages.
Engineering Workbench) is a graphical program
compilation platform which is developed by America 3. Motion Control
National Instruments Corporation. LabVIEW was PID is a common algorithm in the industry. People
designed for automatic control of instruments in the early usually use it in the factories to control heating and
days, and now it has become a mature high-level cooling systems, flow control and pressure control.
programming language. However, in this paper, PID is used to control the
LabVIEW consists of three parts: Block Diagram, Front movement of robots, and with trapezoidal acceleration
Panel, and Icon/Connector as shown in Figures 3 and 4. and deceleration described in next section, it makes the
LabVIEW not only edits and designs programming, but position of robots’ movement more accurate. The setting
also designs the interface. It is much easier for people

© The 2020International Conference on Artificial Life and Robotics (ICAROB2020), Jan.13-16, B-Con Plaza, Beppu, Oita, Japan

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 Application of the MyRIO

value of PID controller (PV) compares with process

variable (SP), then get the deviation (e).
e = SP|PV (1)
Ratio control motion is Kc multiplies the deviation (e). Kc
means the gain of controller. When there is only ratio
control, the system will have steady-state deviation. The
formula is as follows:
up(t) = Kc e (2)
Ratio and integral control used to eliminate the steady-
state deviation. In order to eliminate the steady-state
deviation, the controller must input an integral term and Fig. 5 HSL plane histogram.
accumulate the system deviation over time. Ti indicates
the integration time constant, and the following
represents the integration action:
𝑢 𝑡 𝑒 𝑑𝑡 (3)
Ratio and differential control used to eliminate transient Fig. 6 Dividing into 81 points.
error. Adding differential terms can accelerate system
response time, but adding too much will cause system
instability. Td means differential time constant, and it is
expressed as follows:
𝑢 𝐾𝑇 (4)
In the PID loop, the response value required by above
three calculation methods for motor controller is shown Fig. 7 images conversion.
as below:
𝑢 𝑡 𝐾 𝑒 𝑒 𝑑𝑡 𝑇 (5) to 1 in the binary image, and the color value is between
165 and 215, the saturation value is between 0 and 30,
If the control motor does not consider precise motion
control, generally only needs I/O to control forward and and the brightness value is between 25 and 210.
reverse. When more precise positioning control is Consequently, Hue, Saturation, and Luminance of colors
required, motors will have a little deviation due to some can be defined more clearly, and it is different from
small tolerances. For example, when two same general RGB.
specification motors were controlled, they run at different The method to identify images in this paper is dividing
speed, and made the car turned to left or right. In this the graphics into 81 points (Figure 6), 1 is black square
paper, when AGV is in the motion control, we use and 0 is white square. After images conversion, they will
trapezoidal acceleration and deceleration to make it move be saved in database in txt file (Figure 7). Convert 16
more accurately. In addition, it will make the car avoid graphics into 16 txt files, then store them in the same
overshoot when braking. Using trapezoidal folder and store into the memory of myRIO, wait for
acceleration/deceleration to control is better than using recognition images comparing with the database.
simple acceleration/deceleration without trapezoidal. For
In this paper, the fancy ball recognition is directly
instance, when driving speed is from 0 to 100, then see
inputting RGB values, then binarizing the eight colors.
the red light and do emergency braking, or do slowly
This can improve the speed of image processing and the
brake when see the red light. Trapezoidal acceleration
accuracy of finding balls. The recognition results can be
and deceleration use similar principles to control.
found in the human-machine interface (as shown in
Figure 8).
4. Image Recognition
When you need a specific color, threshold adjustment is 5. Experimental Results
used to analyze, process and delete unnecessary color Using image recognition, the area of the ball and the
images. Figures 5 and 6 show histograms of each plane current position of the ball in the image can be calculated.
of color images that stored in HSL format. The threshold The coordinates in the image must be converted into the
range of grayscale representation in shaded area is the coordinates of the robot, so that the coordinates of the ball
color in each plane. The pixels in color image will be set
© The 2020International Conference on Artificial Life and Robotics (ICAROB2020), Jan. 13-16, B-Con Plaza, Beppu, Oita, Japan

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Bo-Jun Yang, Kuo-Hsien Hsia, Kuo-Lan Su, Evgeni Magid

can be handled well. Then find out the ball's radius

through the image, you can know the seat of the ball on
the court.
After the experimental measurement, the sphere image
radius is about 184 at 20cm. However, the principle of
farthest distortion and recent distortion must be
considered, otherwise the image will be misjudged. If it
is wrongly judged, you can cross-compare the measured
radius and the distance from the original setting to solve Fig. 8 Image human-machine interface.
the problem of misjudgement. The sphere image will
shrink because of the distance, and zoom in if the distance
is close. Using the ratio conversion method, you can
convert the distance from the camera to the physical
sphere by a few centimeters.

6. Conclusions
This paper mainly uses myRIO controller to develop (a)
competition platform and teaching materials for domestic
mobile robotics competition. The robot’s movement and
rotation motion control uses trapezoidal acceleration and
deceleration and PID to control. MyRIO can define foot
position, WIFI module and camera to let mobile robot
complete the competition.
The structure of mobile robot uses Tetrix Robotics and
Matrix Base Set to install. About the motor, it uses a gear
ratio of 64:1 DC servo motor with high torque (b)
characteristics which developed by K-Kingdom. Fig. 9 Experimental court of the mobile robot.
Therefore, it can make mobile robot apply in AGV. After
References
experiments, it has good consequence in moving objects
and image recognition of Pool. 1. The Industrial Market Capacity and Market Space
Prediction of Worldwide Mobile Robotics,
http://www.51report.com/free/3036576.html, 2014.
7. Appendix
2. Automated Guided Vehicle,
Features of the armed car in this paper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_guided_vehicle,
2014.
 The control of movement uses trapezoidal
acceleration and deceleration to make mobile
robotics move more accurately.
 It can find color balls and two-color balls
accurately, and catch the target effectively.
 The image recognition does not require
complicated algorithms. Vision Acquisition of
LabVIEW makes writing image programs much
more efficient, and lets robot’s integration easier.
 It is effective to use single camera to estimate the
distance between target object (sphere) and the
vehicle.

© The 2020International Conference on Artificial Life and Robotics (ICAROB2020), Jan.13-16, B-Con Plaza, Beppu, Oita, Japan

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