An Autonomous Robot with Self Navigation & Book Placement for Library

Placement of books in the library is a tedious and time-consuming activity. It requires human intervention with knowledge of rules of book placement and library database. To save money, time, and effort, we propose to automate this task with an "An Autonomous Robot with Self Navigation & Book Pl

Project Title

An Autonomous Robot with Self Navigation & Book Placement for Library

Project Area of Specialization

Robotics

Project Summary

Placement of books in the library is a tedious and time-consuming activity. It requires human intervention with knowledge of rules of book placement and library database. To save money, time, and effort, we propose to automate this task with an "An Autonomous Robot with Self Navigation & Book Placement for Library."

The autonomous robot will scan the spine label of the targeted book via a camera and extract information about the shelf on which the book is too placed. Once it has the required information, it will navigate to the desired shelf. Books in the library are arranged in a particular order. The robot will scan each shelf to decide the correct position for the book and place it there. Information extraction from spine labels is cheaper than placing RFID tags in all books in the library. For the navigation of the robot, we have devised a Modified Line Following Algorithm, which is easily scalable for other applications.

We have designed a double-decker base with a manipulator for our working prototype. The manipulator can move in x and y directions; it will be used for book placement. The robot's balance is controlled by using fixed and active-counter weights. The robot navigation and book placement are controlled through Raspberry Pi. Our robot is convenient and easy to use. It requires minimal human intervention and will save time and automate a repetitive task.

Project Objectives

This project aims at automating the task of placing books in the library. Books in the library are sorted according to the information stored in the spine label. A spine label encodes the following information.

• Category/genre of the book
• Author’s name
• Publication year
• Index

This project will have the following features

• Extracting information from the spine label
• Finding the right place of the book by the extracted information and navigation
• Navigation using modified line following algorithm

Our robot is capable of

• Lifting books of weight less than 2kg
• Placing books in the second shelve of the library (28 inches from the ground)

Project Implementation Method

Project’s Flow Diagram

Text Extraction Algorithm

Hardware Design

We have designed an arm which has 2 Degrees of Freedom (DoF). It can move on the x and y-axis. For the movement of the arm, we have used the screw-and-nut technique controlled by the stepper motor. For holding the book, two mechanical claws are used as end effectors. Mechanical claws are controlled by servo motors. The height and width of the arm are 20 inches.

For the locomotion of the robot, a four-wheeled mobile base is used. The mobile base is 15 inches long and the arm is mounted over it.

Benefits of the Project

Beneficial for the Stakeholders

This project will benefit the librarian, and everyone related to the library (institute, reader etc.) by providing convenience and saving time and effort.

Technology is Scalable

Later, this project and technology can be extended to different fields like placing goods in warehouses, serving food in hotels, providing medicines to a patient in isolation, managing files in an office, etc.

Filling the technology gap

Automation through robotics is a widely used concept around the globe however its implementation in Pakistan is lacking. Pakistan has a vast network of educational institutions which house libraries for students, faculty and common citizens. All such libraries in Pakistan still work on the principle of human labour of book entry, placement and record maintenance. Our project will fill the technology gap of modernizing our library with automation, our robot will pick and place books in right locations without any human intervention hence making the process simpler and more efficient.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

A robot that can place books in the library. The robot will have a camera to scan the spine labels, a microcontroller to process all the required algorithms and an arm to place the book. The whole process would not need human intervention.

Image-to-text algorithm

Image clicked from the integrated camera is fed to the algorithm. The RGB image is converted to a black and white image using the adaptive thresholding technique, this is done using the OpenCV library of python. Then morphological operations are applied to the image, which erodes and dilates the text so it can easily be processed by the OCR. Then the text is extracted from the preprocessed image using by tesseract library -an OCR algorithm.

Book finding algorithm

Text extracted from the previous algorithm is fed to this algorithm. It first filters out the invalid characters from the text and then subdivides them into the sections like genre, author name, publication year and index. This information is sent to the navigation algorithm and is also used to find the right position of the book. Since the books on a shelf are sorted according to the spine label, the algorithm compares the information on the book on the shelf with the information on the book in the robot’s hand.

Navigation algorithm

• An IR sensor outputs ‘1’ when it reads a black line
• If we have 3 IR sensors, the number of combinations they can collectively outputs are
• We have devised the following Line Following Algorithm
• To tell the positions of racks there would be the pattern on the turn

       

Path with patterns will look like the following figure

Controlling the Manipulator (arm + grippers)

Screw-and-nut technique is used to change the position of the arm. A stepper motor is attached to the threaded rod upon which the rest of the assembly (grippers etc) is mounted. T8 aluminium screw is used to connect the rod and the assembly. This screw allows the threaded rod to rotate but the mounted assembly remains still. Whenever the threaded rod is rotated by the motor, the mounted assembly moves linearly over the rod. Grippers are then controlled by the servo motor.

Final Deliverable of the Project

Hardware System

Core Industry

Others

Other Industries

Core Technology

Robotics

Other Technologies

Sustainable Development Goals

Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com