Computers and Electrical Engineering 105 (2023) 108539

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Computers and Electrical Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compeleceng

Robotic Arm controlled using IoT application

H. Kareemullah a, D. Najumnissa a, M.S. Murshitha Shajahan a, *,
M. Abhineshjayram b, Varshan Mohan c, S. Ayisha Sheerin c, d
a
Department of Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering, B.S.AbdurRahman Crescent Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, India
b
Member Technical Staff, HCL Technologies
c
GET at Jindal South West
d
B.S.AbdurRahman Crescent Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, India

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Work-from-home policies have been the standard since the worldwide pandemic breakout, and
IoT this has spurred the fast development of applications in the area of IoT for remotely monitoring
BlynkIoT App and managing applications. This has encouraged us to design and develop a remotely controlled
Robotic Arm
robotic arm that can be used in applications where the engaging human hazardous environment
Stepper Motor
NodeMCU
(such as quarantined rooms of COVID affected patients) is dangerous. This has led to the
development of a B-rover called a robotic arm, which the technicians remotely control to reduce
the direct contact between the technician and the hazardous environment. It has various appli­
cations, such as a health monitoring system for monitoring the patient’s health conditions, sample
collection from the patients and the capability of the Robotic Arm to deliver medications to the
COVID affected patients without engaging humans. It is proposed to design a 3DOF(degrees of
freedom) robotic arm with stepper motor which is controlled through Wi-Fi using the BlynkIoT
App with widgets like Joystick and Sliders. This will pick and drop the objects from one place to
another. The results show that the designed robotic arm shows a 3% variation from the simulated
and actual results when the slider is adjusted.

1. Introduction

Usage of robots in industries are common now a days. Control from remote is a challenging one and it is not much addressed by the
researchers. This paper propose to design a robot which is controlled through Wi-Fi using the BlynkIoT App with widgets like Joystick
and Sliders so that the operation and control of robots can be done from anywhere. The robot’s Internet of things controlled arm will
help the doctors and nurses monitor and care for the patients remotely as they are risking their lives during C-19 [1]. The Internet of
Things (IoT) is embedded with sensors, software and other technologies to connect and exchange data with other devices and systems
over the Internet [2]. Because of this IoT technology, many industries have worked remotely using Wi-Fi and Internet. Industry 4.0 has
been implemented in almost every industry. Therefore, this IoT-controlled Robotic Arm can also make hospitals smarter and fast for
the life saving of the people [3]. The main objective of this work is for easy monitoring of the patients through different sensors and
actuators, to reduce person-to-person contact between doctors and patients, nurses to patients and patients to patients and easy
controlling of the arm of the robot by the technicians through IoT remote access and control. The block diagram of the proposed work is
shown below in Fig. 1.

* Corresponding author.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compeleceng.2022.108539
Received 30 June 2022; Received in revised form 17 November 2022; Accepted 6 December 2022
Available online 19 December 2022
0045-7906/© 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
H. Kareemullah et al. Computers and Electrical Engineering 105 (2023) 108539

Fig. 1. Block Diagram of the proposed system.

Fig. 2. Integration of Hardware and IoT.

The robotic arm is used for various applications. Yusoff et al. [4] developed a mobile robotic arm, which is wireless and perform
functions such as the pick and place function, which is controlled using a PS2 controller. The proposed robotic arm can move to a
specific distance, such as moving forward, reverse, turning right and turning left. The mobile robotic is combined with the controller
and is based on the Arduino Mega platform and wireless. This arm overcome problems like picking or placing objects very far from the
user and picking and placing dangerous objects or things in the easiest and fastest way. A Robotic Arm that can be controlled using the
internet was built by Kadir et al. [5]. The robot demonstrates that they can be used within the house for performing human work in
day-to-day life. Arduino UNO [6] was used to control the interfaced robot and combined with the internet by employing Arduino
Ethernet Shield. The test results showed that the output efficiently controlled between 97% to 99%. Gawli et al. [7], controlled the
robot’s arm with wire and the internet of things using android mobile remotely. This robot, control, record movements and perform the
same task in a repeated mode. Many authors [8–13] represented a controllable robotic arm using the Internet of Things (IoT) tech­
nology [7,14–16] considering different degrees of freedom for various applications. In hospitals, nurses can use this Robotic Arm to
help doctors pick and place objects during surgery, and it can also be useful in the application of taking care of patients [17] by smart
phones to control the robotic arm. The gyroscope and Accelerometer will send their signals captured from the android and send it to
the Raspberry pi to control the robotic arm. In this work [9], they have emphasised the application of IoT to design a robot arm
developed by additive manufacturing, with the control interface of Arduino with an HC-05 Bluetooth module. Aisha et al. [18]
portrayed that the Robotic Arm can be reprogrammed, and its manipulator design is multifunctional to assist and help humans in
various works and can be used in factories to pick up and place hands to reduce inefficiency. In automobile industry [19] 3-degree-of-­
freedom robot arm along with a mechanical gripper is used. The mean error rate and payload are analysed, and the performance is
optimised. In [15], the researchers have discussed hybrid energy system where ESP8266 Wi-Fi module is the main criterion used to
switch between the two sources of hybrid energy, wind and solar energy going through any inconvenience through a website. Using
IoT, the data transmitted is flexible and is controlled remotely through a web connection with a secured internet. From the Literature
we can find that the industrial robot used these days are of programmable type with specific tasks. From the literature we could find
that the robots were expensive to manufacture and the programming environment was difficult. Hence, in this work, a robotic arm
with 3 DOF independant of each other is simulated and implemented. It is controlled from remote location through IoT from a mobile
app. An attempt has been made to integrate as shown in Fig. 2 and the results are compared. The entire robotic arm is designed using
basic electronic components and 3D printed manipulating with servo motors.

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Fig. 3. RoboDK simulation and controls.

Fig. 4. Three degree of freedom in 2D manipulator with orientation.

2. Methodology

2.1. Robotic Arm Simulation

To begin with we have simulated the robotic arm using an offline simulation software named RoboDK. It is an offline programming
and simulation software and is available free of cost with a one-year student licence. There are approximately 500 industrial robots
included in the library, of which one Industrial robot was selected and controlled using a slider in RoboDK Software. The Industrial
Robot simulated for our work was a 4 DOF robot with 6 different angles that could be varied. The result of the simulated Robotic Arm is
shown in Fig. 3.

2.2. Hardware Design and implementation of Robotic Arm

The Robotic Arm implemented in our study is a 3D printer Robotic Arm with 3 Degrees of Freedom (DOF).[5,20–22] It has 3 servo
motors attached at 3 different joints of the Robotic Arm and 1 Gripper as the end effectors. The initial design is implemented, and is
shown in Fig. 4.
The arm has been modelled with a third degree of freedom and the world space co ordinates along with the wrist is shown in Eqs.
(2.1)–(2.3) [23]
x = L1 cosθ1 + L2 cos(θ1 + θ2 ) + L2 cos(θ1 + θ2 ) + L3 cos(θ1 + θ2 + θ3 ) (2.1)

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Table 1
DH parameters for various links.
Link Li ai-1 di-1 θi

1 L1 0 0 θ1
2 L2 0 0 θ2
3 L3 0 0 θ3

Fig. 5. Gripper (a) front view (b) Back View.

Fig. 6. Wrist joint Servo Motor

y = L1 sin θ1 + L2 sin (θ1 + θ2 ) + L2 sin(θ1 + θ2 ) + L2 sin(θ1 + θ2 + θ3 ) (2.2)

ψ = (θ1 + θ2 + θ3 ) (2.3)

Where
θ1, θ2 and θ3 are the three degrees of freedom and L1, L2, and L3 are the length of the arm and measured as L1= 20 cm, L2 = 10cm and
L3= 3cm. The angle ψ is the orientation angle for the wrist. By calculating the three values the joint angles θ1,θ2 and θ3 are obtained.
The kinematic analysis is also done by attaching a coordinate frame rigidly to each link. An inertial frame is attached to the base of
robotic arm as shown in Fig. 4. Denavit-Hartenberg convention is used to transformat the coordinates from one frame to one more.
Table 1 shows the DH parameters for various links.
Here Li is the length of ith link and is constant whereas is the joint angle made by ith link and θi is a variable. Then the gripper was
analysed which is a two-fingered type. It is angled and controlled using a Servo motor attached to a plastic gear, which is also 3D
printed. There are two plastic gears—one attached to the Servo motor that is controlled electrically. The two gears have two fingers for
picking and placing. The hardware of the gripper as given by the Eq. 2.4 is implemented by us and is shown in Fig. 5.

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H. Kareemullah et al. Computers and Electrical Engineering 105 (2023) 108539

Fig. 7. (A) Elbow Joint Servo Motor.

(B) Integration of Robotic Arm with IoT.

Fig. 8. Flowchart for the Robot Arm control from Blynk Application.

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Fig. 9. Joystick Widget.

Fig. 10. Joystick Widget Configurations.

μnf Fg = wg (2.4)

Where g is the gravity, µ is the coefficient of friction, nf is the number of contacting fingers, Fg is the grippr force and w is the weight pf
the part of object being gripped. We have used a g factor of 3, co efficient of friction between finger contacting surface as 0.25.
Depending upon the weight the force can be determined.
The Gripper is connected to the wrist joint of the Robotic Arm. The wrist joint also consists of a servo motor for up and down wrist
movement. The maximum angle it can rotate is 0 -180◦ along y-axis.
The hardware of the robot is shown in Figs. 6 and 7 has been designed and can be operated manually. The aim is to control any
application using IoT in the wireless mode in remote places. Hence, we are integrating IoT with the designed robot.

2.3. Integration of IoT with the Robotic Arm

NodeMCU is a low-cost, open source IoT platform [14–16] and is ideal for IoT applications because of its high processing power,
built-in Wi-Fi / Bluetooth, and deep sleep operating features. It has a motor driver module that allows to control the motor’s working
speed and direction for controlling the servo motor. The NodeMCU is powered using a power bank connected through (a B-type USB).
The 12 V battery is used for the power supply of the DC motors through motor Driver Shield. The Servo Motors are powered using 9V
batteries for each ServoMotor. When the NodeMCU is powered ON, the NodeMCU initially waits for the Wi-Fi to be connected, and the

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Fig. 11. Slide switch Widget.

Fig. 12. Slide switch Widget Configurations.

Wi-Fi is connected successfully. Then, the Blynk App turns online and is ready to control the Robotic Arm. The integration of the
hardware is shown in Fig. 7. The NodeMCU is programmed to control the DC and Servo motors and is represented as a flowchart in
Fig. 8.

3. Results and discussion

The Robotic Arm base connected to DC motors make the Robot to move forward, backward, right and left turn, including forward
right, forward left, backwards right, backward left and stay using the joystick controller in the Blynk App, as shown in Figs. 9 and 10.
The Robotic Arm is controlled using a slider widget in the Blynk App by changing the angular movements. The Robotic Arm picks

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Fig. 13. IoT based Robotic Arm.

Table 2
Comparison of simulated and actual readings obtained from the designed robot for IoT application.
Slider Switch Position Simulation output Actual output

1 2 3 ᶿ1 (in Degrees) ᶿ2 (in Degrees) ᶿ3 (in Degrees) ᶿ1 (in Degrees) ᶿ2 (in Degrees) ᶿ3 (in Degrees)

0% 0% 0% 0o 0o 0o 0o 0o 0o
25% 0% 0% 45o 0o 0o 42o 0o 0o
50% 0% 0% 90o 0o 0o 87o 0o 0o
75% 0% 0% 135o 0o 0o 132o 0o 0o
100% 0% 0% 180o 0o 0o 176o 0o 0o
0% 25% 0% 0o 45o 0o 0o 42o 0o
0% 50% 0% 0o 90o 0o 0o 87o 0o
0% 75% 0% 0o 135o 0o 0o 134o 0o
0% 100% 0% 0o 180o 0o 0o 178o 0o
0% 0% 25% 0o 0o 45o 0o 0o 42o
0% 0% 50% 0o 0o 90o 0o 0o 87o
0% 0% 75% 0o 0o 135o 0o 0o 131o
0% 0% 100% 0o 0o 180o 0o 0o 177o

an object from one place using the angular movement of the servo motors and successfully drops the object to another place. The slide
widget and its configurations are shown in Figs. 11 and 12. Depending upon the slider switch position, the arm’s movement degrees
were simulated (shown in Figs. 11, 12 and 13) and tested. The simulated and actual readings are compared and are represented in
Table 2.
Table 2 shows that initially when the slider is at a null position, both the simulated output and the actual output are at the null
position. When sliders 2 and 3 are kept at the initial position and slider 1 is varied for 25% of 180◦ , the simulated output is 45◦ , and the
actual output of 42◦ is obtained. Similarly, when slider 1 is changed by 50% output of 90◦ is obtained as a simulated output and 87◦ as
actual output. Keeping the slider position of 2 and 3 at 0, the readings are taken and tabulated in Table 2. Next, the slider positions 1
and 3 are kept constant at 0◦ , and the designed robot is tested. For 25%, the simulated output is 45◦ , and the actual output is 42◦ . For
50%, the simulated output is 90◦ , the actual output is 87◦ , and so on.
In the same way, the slider positions 1 and 2 are kept at the stable null position, and the simulated and the actual output are tested
and compared. The table shows that the variations in the actual reading change from 2◦ to 4◦ . Also, it was found that for the maximum
degree change of 180◦ , the variation is much less than the simulated output. This is due to the load-applied weight of the arm itself, and
there is also some small variation in the PWM signal produced. All these factors contribute to the small variation in the servo motor’s
angular displacement.
The graphical representation of the comparison chart is shown in Fig. 14.
To check its repeatability, the arm was commanded to go to the same position at least five times while checking for any variations.
To get better results, the experiment was repeated for three different locations. It was noted that the end effector would return to the
exact coordinate every time, giving it a repeatability of within ±0.95 mm.

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Fig. 14. Comparison Chart for the simulated and actual output.

4. Conclusion

In this work, a robotic arm with 3 DOF independant of each other is simulated and implemented and is controlled via the Internet of
Things (IoT) using NodeMCU (ESP-8266) and the blink application. The smart control of robotic arm can be done by using a personal
computer or a smartphone which must be connected to the same network. This implementation allows the Robotic Arm to be
controlled or accessed worldwide by the users through the Internet of things. Additionally, any system that adopts or uses internet
facilities will experience a short delay depending on the network speed, type and distance from the network. The practical test results
of various references have proven that the wireless control connection can reduce the delay in time and make it more stable. The future
scope of this work would be to employ Raspberry platform, which would facilitate advanced logical and computation facility.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to
influence the work reported in this study.

Data availability

Data will be made available on request.

Acknowledgements

All persons who have made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript (e.g., technical help, writing and
editing assistance, general support), but who do not meet the criteria for authorship, are named in the Acknowledgements and have
given us their written permission to be named. If we have not included an Acknowledgements, then that indicates that we have not
received substantial contributions from non-authors.

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