An autonomous robotic pacer for track runners

Abstract

Amateur runners and professional athletes usually follow preplanned training sessions by running for certain distances at certain paces. Various wearable gadgets, such as smart watches with GPS, stop watches etc. can be used to guide the athlete through such training sessions by allowing him/her to track the covered distance, time and consequently the pace. However, it is well known that a running companion or professional pacer can improve the quality of the training sessions by guiding the runners to run at a certain pace to achieve the goal of the training session better. When guided by a pacer or a running companion, the runner is able to focus solely on the running technique rather than on the pacing gadget, and is also expected to perform better at demanding periods of the session. The aim of this project is to design a basic robotic pacer that can be programmed to run a certain distance in a certain time to mimic the role of a human running companion and help runners to perform better during training on a standard running track. The task of the robot is to guide athletes around running tracks and help them maintain a certain pace, or a sequence of paces, by utilizing line following and speed control techniques, using two separate PID control loops. The robot was built around an off-the-shelf radio-controlled car, and converted into an autonomous robot by mounting a custom-built line sensing mechanism. Speed sensing mechanism and the corresponding control system unfortunately was not implemented fully due to the difficulties faced when installing the encoder, that is used as the feedback source in the speed control loop. The results obtained from the tests performed on the steering controller are very promising (the error from the line centre was kept within ±8mm) and could be improved significantly with more testing on a real running track and further tuning and future improvement.