Controlling Unmanned Ground Vehicle Via 4 Channel Remote Control

A four-channel Remote Control (RC) which is used to model aircraft can be modified to control multiple DC motors and other devices on Unmanned Guided Vehicle (UGV). Remote control used in this paper is HobbyKing brand that works at frequency 2.4 GHz. Eight bit microcontroller module is added to give command reference value to the transmitter module of the remote control that will be sent to the receiver module. On the transceiver module, two channels are used as an identifier (address and command), while the other two channels are used for transfer hexadecimal data (0-F). A PWM data received by the receiver module is read by the microcontroller module using the counter method utilizing the 16-bit timer. The data is sent to the DAC module to be converted into analogue voltage 0-5 Volt which is then manipulated by a signal amplifier to moving the DC motors or control various other devices on the UGV. The algorithm is implemented into the microcontroller module using the C programming language. Test results show that the counter method can be used for reading a PWM signal with absolute error less than 1%, so that the UGV can be controlled well via remote control.