The hardware side is mostly functional by now. We're still going to make a third version with all the issues ironed out, but now we can focus on writing the algorithms to make it into an actual line-follower.

The software stack

The robot is controlled by ESP32-S3, a powerfull microcontroller with WiFi capability.

It can run in standalone mode, with a PID controll loop using data read from the sensor.

The ESP32 also acts as a web-server, and by connecting to it from a browser we can have a big control panel on our computer.

This control panel is connected with the ESP32 via webSocket, so all measured data is transfered in realtime and a lot of the processing can be done on browser side in Javascript

Control panel features

• Adjusting parameters in runtime
• Current and PID data displayed in a line chart
• Map of the robot's track - calculating position from encoders
• Manual control override - drive with keyboard

To Do: 

The software for this robot is nowhere near done yet.

Most importantly we need to implement the PID control loop to make it follow a line, but there are other features we want to make.

The displayed map should basically have a scan of the track done by the robot's sensor, along with other visual data.

We also want to make the algorithm more advanced than simply following a line, for example handling intersections etc.