Electronics · Coursework
Line-following Robot
Electronics assembly and integration in a five-person team building an autonomous line-following robot.
- My role
- Electronics lead in a five-person university team
- Period
- 2024 · Aston University
- Source
- Public project overview
The question
Can the sensing, controller, and motor-drive electronics work reliably as one physical system?
PCB assembly · Soldering · IR sensing · PWM motor control · Hardware integrationMy contribution
Led PCB assembly, soldering, wiring, electrical checks, and integration of the team's sensing and motor-control electronics.
01 / problem
Line following
The team built a robot that detected a line and adjusted its motion to follow it. That required the sensing, controller, and motor-drive subsystems to work together on a physical assembly, where a connection fault could matter as much as the control logic.
02 / role
My contribution
I led the electronics build: assembling and soldering the PCB-based stack, completing the wiring, checking connections, and carrying out electrical testing. I worked with the other team members to integrate the sensor array, their controller, and the PWM motor-drive electronics.
The robot was a five-person project. My contribution was the electronics assembly and integration; the controller and complete system were team work.
03 / architecture
Control architecture
- An eight-element infrared reflectance sensor array provided information about the line's position.
- The team's controller used the sensed position to determine a steering correction.
- PWM motor-drive electronics adjusted the drive response to bring the robot toward the line.
- The PCB assembly, wiring, and connections formed the electrical path between those subsystems.
04 / decisions
Fault finding
My work combined assembly with inspection, connection checks, and electrical testing. Checking the physical signal and power paths gave the team a way to investigate faults before attributing every unexpected movement to the controller.
05 / evaluation
Testing and outcome
The project reached a working autonomous line-following robot. I used multimeters and basic test equipment during the build and debugging process. The evidence available for this case is the completed team project and my documented electronics role; no lap-time, speed, accuracy, or competition result is claimed.
06 / limitations
Project scope
- This was university coursework in 2024, not a current commercial robotics product.
- The website's control-loop graphic is an illustration, not recorded telemetry or a reproduction of the team's controller.
- The later public AVR motor-bring-up repository is a separate exercise and is not presented as this robot's source code.
Interactive illustration
Line-following control
Select a line position to see a simplified qualitative steering response. This explains the team system; it is not recorded telemetry, a circuit schematic, or a claim that I wrote the entire controller.
Illustrative states · qualitative motor response
Source
Explanatory diagram; no public repository.
Public overview reviewed 8 September 2026.