Hexbug code rewrite makes it a walking line-follower

You know you’ve got a good hardware platform if you can easily repurpose it with a code rewrite. And that’s what [Eric] continues to do with these little Hexbugs. This time around he’s bent the IR emitter and receiver downward to use as a reflectance sensor. This gives it the ability to follow a dark line on a light surface.… Read the rest

Matchbox-sized line following robot

pocketbot_line_following_robot

While they are not nearly as complex as their self-navigating brethren, building line following robots is no simple task, especially when they are this small. The creation of [Ondřej Staněk], this matchbox-sized line following robot is quite impressive.

PocketBot’s 48mm x 32mm circuit board also acts as its frame, supporting the wheels, motors, microcontroller and more. The brains of the … Read the rest

Making a line-following toy into a programmable robot

[Eric Gregori] picked up this little yellow robot as a kit build. It has a single PCB inside that has a pair of IR emitters and detectors pointed downward at the front of the robot. It is able to follow a dark line on a light surface based on how the infrared beam reflects back to the detector. But it’s … Read the rest

Line following tank without a microcontroller

This line following tank uses analog circuitry to sense where a dark line is and adjust its course. Despite the opening paragraph on the schematic page (which looks to be leftover from a past project writeup) this circuit relies on a set of transistors for motor control. [Chris] does a great job of explaining the setup in detail; it boils … Read the rest

Line following racers

[Tim] sent in these quick little line following bots (translated). They were sent as participants in cosmobot, but due to an unfortunate dropbox mishap, they didn’t have updated firmware. They placed fifth and ninth place. As you can see in the video above, they are quite speedy. You can get the schematics and code on their project pageRead the rest