Controlling motor to affect rover movement direction

This post is to capture finding on 2 wheeled rover movement procedure. the rover is connected to Laptop via serial connection provided by Arduino micro controller which will be referred to as only Arduino. Command sent from laptop is interpreted by Arduino and sends appropriate signals to motor controller.

The motor controller allows direction of the wheel rotation to be changed and supply power to the wheels both left and right. Arduino supplies 5 v to each wheels. And in the sense of direction of the wheels, its either in clockwise or anti clockwise. These can be achieved by changing the polarity of the terminals. When signal 1 is sent to these circuit, the wheel rotates clockwise and if signal 2 the wheel rotates anticlockwise.


So, direction of a wheel rotation is controlled by a pair of signals. Since we have two wheels, left and right, each wheel rotation direction controlled by a pair of signal that comes from Arduino. This means we have 4 signals that comes into motor controller, and following table sums up what each signal means.


Signalmeans
1right wheel - clock wise
2right wheel - anti clock wise
3left wheel - clock wise
4left wheel - anti clock wise

By combining these signals and manipulating the direction of the wheels independently we can affect the direction of the rover movement and desired.

For example, if we rotate left wheel anticlockwise and right wheel clockwise, the rover moves forward. and if we rotate left wheel clockwise and right wheel anticlockwise, the rover moves backward. if we want to turn right, we set both wheels to rotate anticlockwise, and clockwise to turn left.

Following table summarises possible combination and directional affect on our rover.

Signal combinationsMeans
1 and 4Moves Forward
2 and 3Moves Backward
1 and 3Turn Left
2 and 4Turn Right

To sum up, by combining different signals that controls the wheel direction, we can get desired movements from rover.

Discussion is welcome. Please email me at civmook@gmail.com for any assistance...

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