Line Following Robot for Work

Hey there robot!  Take this thing over to Sam.  I know he’s only 15 feet that way, but it’s way cooler if you do it.

If you’ve ever done a course in electronics, robotics, or mechatronics, chances are you’ve built or seen a line following robot.  For those that haven’t, the basic idea is a wheeled robot that can follow a line on the floor.  A little boring by today’s standards, but I’m reviving it for this half-bakery.

The Idea

What we’re looking to do here is build a little robot about the height of a coffee table table and about 50cm by 50cm that can follow a line around the office.  Fortunately for us, the carpet at work is pretty shitty.  Actually really shitty.  So if we stick white masking tape line to it, it doesn’t matter if it’s for a robot or nothing at all.  We’ve basically just added to the value of the place.  Anyway, this robot would follow that line from point A to point B and then from point B to point A whenever we hit the button.

Initially this would just be one of those “because I can” things between me and this other guy at work who can appreciate the useless “why not” of this (hi Sam).  But, conceivably, this could be expanded to everyone on the floor or even to deliver mail from floor to floor and save the mailroom guys some leg work.  there’s a food trolley too, but we’re not replacing that.  The food trolley girl is the only highlight of the day and I’ll be damned if she’ll be replaced.