Implementation of WSN which can simultaneously monitor temperature conditions and control robot for positional accuracy

Sensor networks and robots are both quickly evolving fields, the union of two fields seems inherently symbiotic. Collecting data from stationary sensors can be time consuming task and thus can be automated by adding wireless communication capabilities to the sensors. This proposed project takes advantage of wireless sensor networks in remote handling environment which can send signals over far distances by using a mesh topology, transfers the data wirelessly and also consumes low power. In this paper a testbed is created for wireless sensor network using custom build sensor nodes for temperature monitoring in labs and to control a robot moving in another lab. The two temperature sensor nodes used here consists of a Arduino microcontroller and XBee wireless communication module based on IEEE 802.15.4 standard while the robot has inherent FPGA board as a processing unit with xbee module connected via RS-232 cable for serial communication between ZigBee device and FPGA. A simple custom packet is designed so that uniformity is maintained while collection of data from temperature nodes and a moving robot and passing to a remote terminal. The coordinator ZigBee is connected to remote terminal (PC) through its USB port where Graphical user interface (GUI) can be run to monitor Temperature readings and position of Robot dynamically and save those readings in database.