Academic Projects :
Project Title : “PID based Temperature controller for Rapid Thermal Annealing System”
Project Guide : Dr. C.K.Ramesha , Faculty EEE &I , BITS - Pilani K.K.Birla Goa Campus
Abstract :
RTA (Rapid Thermal Annealing System) is a oven like structure whose temperature can be ramped up to a very high temperature maintained constant for sometime and then ramped down.This process of rapid annealing was supposed to be used to change the characteristics of semiconductor .Unlike other ovens, heating in this case taked place by means of an array of halogen lamps by means of heat radiation.A temperature controller was required of such an annealing system which my professor was working on.The project was divided in 3 parts:
1. Designing the Controller : After trying out Bang-Bang (with and without threshold) controller and P,PI,PID controller, it was decided upon to use PI Controller.
2. The SCR Thyristor controller:The Thyristor circuit (made for one lamp) consisted of zero-crossing detector and the timing implementation was done in uC.
3. UART based communication Interfacing for parameter tuning and Plotting realtime temperature using Python.
A ppt. presentation of the project can be viewed here: Presentation
Project Guide : Dr. C.K.Ramesha , Faculty EEE &I , BITS - Pilani K.K.Birla Goa Campus
Abstract :
RTA (Rapid Thermal Annealing System) is a oven like structure whose temperature can be ramped up to a very high temperature maintained constant for sometime and then ramped down.This process of rapid annealing was supposed to be used to change the characteristics of semiconductor .Unlike other ovens, heating in this case taked place by means of an array of halogen lamps by means of heat radiation.A temperature controller was required of such an annealing system which my professor was working on.The project was divided in 3 parts:
1. Designing the Controller : After trying out Bang-Bang (with and without threshold) controller and P,PI,PID controller, it was decided upon to use PI Controller.
2. The SCR Thyristor controller:The Thyristor circuit (made for one lamp) consisted of zero-crossing detector and the timing implementation was done in uC.
3. UART based communication Interfacing for parameter tuning and Plotting realtime temperature using Python.
A ppt. presentation of the project can be viewed here: Presentation
Project Title : "Coconut Tree Climbing Robot"
Project Guide : Dr. Anita Agarwal , Faculty EEE &I , BITS - Pilani K.K.Birla Goa Campus
Abstract :
It all started when my friend Albert Davies after coming back from his village at Kerala told regarding the acute shortage of finding people to get coconuts off the tree.Seeing the nature of the job, it is risky as well as requires skill.But as the pay is not much very few young people are left who are actually into it. As a way out we thought that automating the task by using a robot could help out the shortage as well as well as avoid risking life.So we firstly started to design a robot which could climb up the tree and fetch the coconut.We had following constrains in mind:
1. Cost
2. Ease of use
3. Maintenance
To begin with we divided project into two stages:
1. Climbing up the tree
2. Fetching the coconut
We decided to start with stage 1.Firstly we tried to keep it simple by starting with manually controlled robot with minimum number of motors.We tried various designs and prototyped and tested them on coconut tree on our campus.Our efforts are detailed in the report(here).The finalized design was hexagonal shaped bot which would cling to tree and powered by two motors to go to the top of the tree in a spiraling fashion.But unfortunately the design didn't work.The torque provided by the motors wasn't sufficient and due to the rigde like structure of the tree it required a feedback mechanism wherein the grip to the tree is adjusted in real-time.Hope that sometime in future we would be achieve this in real. But overall it was a awesome learning experience and great application of physics and engineering -- applied science !
Abstract :
It all started when my friend Albert Davies after coming back from his village at Kerala told regarding the acute shortage of finding people to get coconuts off the tree.Seeing the nature of the job, it is risky as well as requires skill.But as the pay is not much very few young people are left who are actually into it. As a way out we thought that automating the task by using a robot could help out the shortage as well as well as avoid risking life.So we firstly started to design a robot which could climb up the tree and fetch the coconut.We had following constrains in mind:
1. Cost
2. Ease of use
3. Maintenance
To begin with we divided project into two stages:
1. Climbing up the tree
2. Fetching the coconut
We decided to start with stage 1.Firstly we tried to keep it simple by starting with manually controlled robot with minimum number of motors.We tried various designs and prototyped and tested them on coconut tree on our campus.Our efforts are detailed in the report(here).The finalized design was hexagonal shaped bot which would cling to tree and powered by two motors to go to the top of the tree in a spiraling fashion.But unfortunately the design didn't work.The torque provided by the motors wasn't sufficient and due to the rigde like structure of the tree it required a feedback mechanism wherein the grip to the tree is adjusted in real-time.Hope that sometime in future we would be achieve this in real. But overall it was a awesome learning experience and great application of physics and engineering -- applied science !