SMART ROBOTIC ARM

USING
INTRODUCTION

I will share with you how to make a smart robotic arm. You
can control this arm using a “Master” arm using
potentiometers. The “Slave” arm is comprised of servos and
will run off of the potentiometer readings. This will mimic
manual movements. Along with this feature, the prototype
also smart because it can record positions and repeat them
continuously.

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 Major Components

1. Servo motors x 5
2. Potentiometers x 5
3. Arduino UNO.
4. Breadboard.
5. 5V 2A Adaptor.
6. Cardboard/Wood/Sun-board/acrylic whatever is available
or easy to find.
7. And also need Arduino IDE installed.
8. Connecting
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wires, etc.
 MAKING THE ARMS

 Here I have used Popsicle sticks to make the arm. You

can use any material that is available to you. And you
can try different mechanical designs to make an even
better arm. My design is not very stable.

 I just used double-sided tape to stick the servos to

the Popsicle stick and fasten them using screws.
 For the Master arm, I glued potentiometers to
popsicle sticks and made an arm.
 Referring to the pictures will give you a better idea.
 I have mounted everything on an A4 size canvas
board used as a base.
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 Making Connections
In this step, we will make all the necessary connections.

 First, connect all the servos in parallel to the

power supply ( The Red wire to +ve and Black or
Brown Wire to Gnd)
 Next, connect the signal wires i.e Yellow or
Orange wire to the PWM pin of Arduino.
 Now connect the potentiometers to +5v and Gnd
of Arduino in parallel.
 Connect the middle terminal to the Analog pin of
Arduino.
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  Here Digital Pins 3,5,6,9 & 10 are used for
controlling the servos.
 Analog Pins A0 to A4 are used for Input from
Potentiometers.
 The servo connected to pin 3 will be controlled
by a potentiometer connected to A0
 Servo connected to pin 5 will be controlled by
pot on A1, and so on…
Note:- Even though Servos are not powered by Arduino,
Make sure to connect the GND of the servos to Arduino
or else the arm won’t work.

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 The Logic of this code is fairly simple the values of
potentiometers are stored in an array the records are
CODING
then traversed using a for loop and the servos do the
Steps as per the values. You can check out this tutorial I
used for reference “Arduino Potentiometer Servo
Control & Memory”
 First, we will declare all the necessary
variables globally so we can use them
throughout the program. No special
explanation is needed for this.
Link- CODE -01
 Now we will write a setup function, where we
set pins and their functions. This is the main
function that executes first.
Link-CODE -02
 Now we have to read the values of
potentiometers using Analog Input pins and
map them to control servos. For this we will
define a function and name it Map_Pot();,
you can name it anything you want it is a
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user-de fined function.
 LINK - CODE 03
  Now we will write the loop function.
LINK - CODE 04
Once the code is ready, Now upload it to the Arduino board.
The Smart arm is ready to work. The function is not
yet as smooth as the one made by Stoerpeak.

If you can make the code better or have any

suggestions for me please let me know in the
comment section.
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