Home Assistant Navigation - Smart Optical and Laser Orientation : H.A.N.S.O.L.O

Abstract: With the market for autonomous home assistants steadily growing, reasons for the development of new ways of communicating with the robot assistants have emerged. This thesis aims to develop a system wherein a human can draw instructions for the robot to interpret and follow or perform. An autonomous robot based on an Arduino board was built. Software for pattern recognition through a camera was developed and tested for precision and efficiency. The device was able to read a command drawn on a sheet of paper by the user, analyze it to extract a route for the four wheeled robot to follow and transmit operations wirelessly via Bluetooth. The intent was not to create a marketable product, but rather to build a proof of concept for a viable alternative to existing communication systems for home assistants. The resulting product was able to interact with a human operator, ask it to circle an area to sweep and successfully do as commanded. When the camera captured what had been drawn the system needed 70 seconds to sweep an area of 0.8m2. Errors for forward motion and rotation were calculated to 2% - 3.5% and 0.98% - 0.99% respectively.