I began work on my first robot about two years ago. For no particular reason, I decided to begin with a line following robot and truth be told, my first attempt at building it was a complete failure. Looking back at my efforts, I believe, for a beginner, I was rather too ambitious. The circuit that I had designed had a bunch of unnecessary stuff which I then believed would give my robot an edge over the others. But it never worked and I had to start all over from scratch.
In my second attempt, I managed to get the robot on track. As delighted as I was with my first robot, it was nowhere near where I wanted it to be. I took it to a couple of competitions and not much to my surprise, it failed in both of them. I knew it was time to make some major changes in the design.
In my third attempt, (actually, it wasn’t the third, it was a revision of my second attempt), I updated the firmware and came up with a much more stable and accurate version. It performed well when tested and much to my delight, it finished first in two competitions and second in another. Though I was proud with what I had achieved, I felt that the robot was visually rather unappealing. And you’ll come to know why from its picture given above. It had wires running all over it and I had no other option but to rebuild it. A month or so later, I had the robot all ready and that is the current version of my first robot.
In this instructable I will guide you through the steps that I've followed in building the current version of my robot. It’s one of those robots which belong to the “scratch-built” category. You might find it difficult to find all the parts that I have used. So I insist you to read through the steps that I have followed, and then implement it in your own way with the parts that you've found.
This instructable requires that you are familiar with the following:
• Soldering and related equipments
• Hand tools like screwdrivers, wire cutters and strippers
• Reading schematics and connection diagrams
• C/C++ programming for AVR microcontrollers (optional)
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