the motor controller terminals in the middle of the chassis; left
side motor wires go to the motor controller terminals in the front
of the chassis.
Figure 2: The Shield-Bot
Wire power cables – Wire the power cables to the motor
controllers (red is positive, black is negative). Make sure to
tighten all terminals to prevent wires from disconnecting [4].
Installing the Grove Shield – Insert the Grove shield onto the
Arduino breakout board. Connect the motor controllers to the
Grove Shield in any I2C labelled port using the Grove cables.
Mounting the Acrylic Plate and Add Sensors – Secure the acrylic
plate to the main chassis using the four brass connectors. Connect
the Grove LED to Grove Shield port D2.
Figure 3: The sensor
Mounting the Aluminum Plate – Secure the aluminum mounting
plate on top of the acrylic. Installing the wheels – Install the 4
wheels onto the drive shaft mounting plate using the screw.
The shield-Bot has some features which include; Easy to start:
The ShieldBot is plug & play, so can be ready to use within a few
minutes; Expandable: solderless grove expansion ports enable
easy attachment of more sensors, and shield headers allow the use
of additional Arduino shields; Open Source: Its designed to be
modified, adapted and transformed into whatever you want, and
Arduino Based: The ShieldBot is an Arduino shield, so the
extensive Arduino community and shield ecosystem will make
your project ideas limitless!
3.1. Programming the Shield-Bot
Connect the DC barrel jack to the Arduino 101. Connect the Li-Po
battery to the Dean’s male Traxxas connection. Connect a USB
programming cable to the Arduino 101 and to your computer.
I use the same Arduino101 and Grove Motor Controller as
the Programming the Arduino101 for a basic rover so check it out
for an overview of how BLE is setup, and the motors are
controlled using the Grove Motor Controller. Since the original
base model code used one motor controller, and two are used
here, there are some basic changes that I had to make.
However, the first major extension that I added was to process the
whole UART transmitted string instead just the first character.
This allows the commands between the rover and the BLE mobile
device to be more human readable. For example, “a” go forward
became: “Auto: Up” and “b” turn left became: “Auto: Left” [5].
To make the BOE Shield-Bot go forward, its left wheel has to turn
counterclockwise, but its right wheel has to turn clockwise.
Remember that a sketch can use the Servo library’s write
Microseconds function to control the speed and direction of each
servo. Then, it can use the delay function to keep the servos
running for certain amounts of time before choosing new speeds
and directions. Here’s an example that will make the BOE Shield-
Bot roll forward for about three seconds, and then stop. Example
Sketch: Forward ThreeSeconds  Make sure the BOE Shield’s
power switch is set to 1 and the battery pack is plugged into the
Arduino.  Create and save the ForwardThreeSeconds sketch, and
run it on the Arduino.  Disconnect the programing cable and put
the BOE Shield-Bot on the floor. While holding down the Reset
button, move the switch to position 3, and then let go. The BOE
Shield-Bot should drive forward for three seconds.
A sketch automatically starts in its setup function. It runs the code
in there once before moving on to the loop function, which
automatically keeps repeating. Since we only want the BOE
Shield-Bot to go forward and stop once, all the code can be placed
in the setup function. This leaves the loop function empty, but
that’s okay. Chapter 4 • BOE Shield-Bot Navigation 106 •
Robotics with the BOE Shield-Bot As with all motion sketches,
the first action setup takes is making the piezospeaker beep. The
tone function call transmits a signal to digital pin 4 that makes the
piezospeaker play a 3 kHz tone that lasts for 1 second. Since the
tone function works in the background while the code moves on,
delay (1000) prevents the BOE Shield-Bot from moving until the
tone is done playing
Next, the servoLeft object instance gets attached to digital pin 13
and the servoRight instance gets attached to pin 12. This makes
calls to servoLeft.writeMicroseconds affect the servo control
signals sent on pin 13. Likewise, servoRight.writeMicroseconds
calls will affect the signals sent on pin 12.
Remember that we need the BOE Shield-Bot’s left and right
wheels to turn in opposite directions to drive forward. The
function call servoLeft.writeMicroseconds (1700) makes the left
servo turn full speed counterclockwise, and the function call
servoRight.writeMicroseconds (1300) makes the right wheel turn
full speed clockwise. The result is forward motion. The delay
(3000) function call keeps the servos running at that speed for
three full seconds. After the delay, servoLeft.detach and
servoRight.detach discontinue the servo signals, which bring the
robot to a stop
After the setup function runs out of code, the sketch automatically
advances to the loop function, which repeats itself indefinitely. In
this case, we are leaving it empty because the sketch is done, so it
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Arduino Shied-Bot Autonomous Drive

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