Remote Control in Smartphone-based Visible Light Communications

The development of a homemade remote-controlled (RC) car using a smartphone as a controller is described in this paper. Considering visible light communication (VLC), a smartphone uses its LED to send information to an RC car built with a low-cost four-wheel drive Arduino kit, and with a low-cost ambient light sensor as a photodiode. The development of this project encourages an interdisciplinarity that considers robotic, programming, control systems, and communication areas. The achieved results are satisfactory in terms of build time and homemade possibility, thus increasing the culture of VLC dissemination. A short video of the RC car can be seen at youtu.be/09Z2nxKxbek.