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Line Following Robot ? We all have heard or seen one. Let’s build one in this tutorial.
If this is the first time you are building a Line Following Robot or LFR, as it is commonly known, this will be a comprehensive guide.
To keep matters simple, we’ll not be using any microcontroller/processor or programming and anyone can make it in a couple of hours.
BRIEF INTRODUCTION
Line follower or Line following robot is an autonomous robot which follows either black line on a white area (or a white line on a black area).
Robot must be able to detect particular line using sensors and keep following it. The paths can be complicated and in such cases a microcontroller is required to navigate the path.
However, we’ll be keeping it very simple for beginners and won’t be using any programming/microcontroller for this robot.
LINE FOLLOWING ROBOT – PRINCIPLE OF OPERATION
Any line follower uses sensors, which can be a combination of LED & LDR or IR LED & IR Receiver. Both work on similar principle but we’ll be using IR sensor for our robot. You must be knowing that the light that strikes any platform is reflected.
The reflection and absorption coefficient of light depends upon material, color of platform and other factors.In simple words the black surface absorbs the light and the white surface reflects it, and this is the basic concept behind making a line follower.Our robot’s sensor has two parts which are emitter/transmitter and receiver.
The emitter continuously emits the infrared light and the receiver absorbs it after getting reflected from the black or white surface. The voltage across the receiver is directly proportional to the reflected light it absorbs.
So for white surface, maximum reflection occurs and the reverse happens for the black surface. This change in signal voltage is used to drive a LFR.

Components required :
1) 1 x Robot Chassis with Caster Wheel (Buy here) + 2 x DC Geared Motors (Buy here) + 2 x Tyres (Buy here)
2) 2 x IR sensor Modules (Buy here)
3) 1 x General Purpose PCB (Buy here) or 1 x Mini Breadboard (Buy here) + Jumper Wires (Buy here)
4) L293D Motor Driver Module with IC (Buy here)
5) 1 x 7805 Based Power Supply Circuit Components (Buy here)
6) Tools (Buy here)
Download Schematic from here.
Please follow the video for an easy step by step guide. In case of any questions or queries, feel free to post below.
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