2018 IEEE 4th International Symposium in Robotics and Manufacturing Automation (ROMA)
Arduino Controlled Gesture Robot
Dheeban S S, Harish D V,
Assistant Professor, Manager, Sree HARI Hi-
Department of EEE, Tech Automations,
AAA College of Sivakasi,
Engineering and harishdv@yahoo.co.in
Technology Sivakasi,
Dheeban5792@gmail.com
Abstract--Nowadays robotic arm is used in various
areas such as military, defense, medical surgeries, pick
and place function in industrial automation
applications. Based on the gesture of human hands the
robotic arm moves and performs the task and this
system replicates the actions of human hands. The arm
is very flexible and can be made suitable in places where
the environment is not safe for humans like firework
manufacturing industry, bomb diffusing etc. There are
various techniques for controlling the robotic arm. This
paper deals with the accelerometer-based gesture
recognition for controlling the movements of the
robotic arm through wireless control by using Zig- bee
protocol.
Keywords – Zig-bee, PWM- Pulse Width Modulation, XBEE,
Arduino
I. INTRODUCTION
Robotics has created a great impact on our society in
this modern era and so reserve its space in all fields like
Engineering, Medical, Space Science, and many more.
Robots can be used in places where human life is placed at
risk such operations are bomb diffusing, fireworks
industry. The control of the robotic system can be done by
any type of controllers like micro-controllers, DSP
controllers, Arduino controller, and FPGA controller.
Arduino controller is one of the easiest ways to control the
system and it has more control ports when compared to the
micro-controllers and the DSP controller. Arduino is an
open source platform which makes use of a microcontroller
on the board. This microcontroller is programmed using the
Arduino programming language and the Arduino
development environment. The projects with the Arduino
platform can be of stand-alone or they can communicate
with the software running on a computer (e.g. Flash,
Processing). The wireless transmission is used for
transmitting the signals from one end to the other. The
wireless communication is the transfer of information
between two or more points that are not connected by an
electrical conductor. The most common wireless
technology used is the radio. The wireless transmission
must be reliable and it must have a very fast response. The
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Hari Vignesh A, Prasanna M,
Engineer at Vedanta Research Assistant at
Resources Plc, Fraunhofer IPA Germany,
Hari.vignesh1205@gmail. prasanna.mseceee@gmail.
com com
wireless transmission that can be used is Bluetooth,
Infrared, Zig-bee and Wi-fi technology [6]. The Zig-bee
technology is used as it provides a wide range of control
and it is inexpensive.
II. OPERATION OF ROBOTIC ARM
The system consists of two sides one is the sending side
and the other is the receiving side. The data is transmitted
wirelessly through the Zig-bee protocol. The overall block
diagram of the system is shown in figure 1.
A. Sending End
In the sending end, an accelerometer is used to detect
the movement of the robotic arm in 3-axis (x, y, z). This
accelerometer is fixed to the sensing glove which is to be
worn by the human [3]. The accelerometer gives three
analog values (x, y, z) based on the movement of the human
hand and the Arduino Uno board gets these readings as an
input.
Slide potentiometers are attached to the fingers of the
sensing glove which is also the input to the analog pins of
the Arduino board. The fingers are moved, the slide
potentiometer value changes and this can be used to
recognize the actions of fingers
A Zig-bee module is attached through an Arduino
shield to the Arduino board [7]. The data obtained from the
slide potentiometer and the accelerometer are sent
wirelessly through the Zig-bee module to another Zig-bee
module which is placed on the controller in the robotic arm.
B. Receiving End
At the receiving end, the data is received through the
zig-bee module which is attached to the Arduino Mega via
zig-bee shield [4]. The data is received from the zig-bee and
the movements on the motors are made with the help of the
Arduino mega board. The actuation techniques are carried
out with the help of servo motors. The PWM signal for the
servo motors is given through the PWM output pins of
Arduino Mega. The PWM signal is given based on the
values received from zig-bee module attached to it. The
five micro servos of 1kg capacity are used to actuate the
fingers of the robotic arm and the movement of the arms in
the respective axis can be carried out with the help of three
6 kg servo motors.
2018 IEEE 4th International Symposium in Robotics and Manufacturing Automation (ROMA)

Figure 1: Block diagram of the gesture control robotic arm

III. DESIGN OF SENSING GLOVES

Slide potentiometer is attached to a PCB and was given
a common supply from Arduino board. The variable pin of
each slide potentiometer is given to analog inputs of the
Arduino board. The Accelerometer is directly attached to
Arduino analog pins. Both the accelerometer and the slide
potentiometer are given 5V supply from the Arduino
boards. The PCB containing slide potentiometer and the
Arduino board is attached to the glove which can be worn
by the human. The finger tip of the glove is attached to the
varying point of slide potentiometer. If the finger is moved,
it will pull the moving point of the slide potentiometer,
thereby sensing the motion of the fingers. Zigbee is
attached to the Arduino board which acts as a sender to
send the data of slide potentiometer and accelerometer. In-
order to obtain the gesture, the slide potentiometers and the
accelerometers are used which are shown in figure 2.
A. Accelerometer (ADXL 335)
The rate of acceleration due to gravity can be of either
static that is for tilt sensing applications or dynamic that is
for motion, shock or vibration applications. Both the static
and dynamic rate of acceleration can be measured with the
help of the accelerometer ADXL335. The accelerometer
consists of three capacitors CX, CY, and CZ that are used to
determine the bandwidth of the accelerometer. These three
capacitors can be accessed via XOUT, YOUT, and ZOUT pins.
The functional block diagram of the accelerometer is given
in the below figure 3.

Figure 3: Functional diagram of Accelerometer (ADXL335)

Figure 2: Sensing gloves structure
The accelerometer ADXL335 is one of the 3-axis
acceleration measurement systems. The measurement
range for the ADXL335 is of ±3 g minimum. An open -

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2018 IEEE 4th International Symposium in Robotics and Manufacturing Automation (ROMA)

loop acceleration measurement architecture can be
implemented as it contains a polysilicon surface-micro
machined sensor and a signal conditioning circuitry [1]. The
analog voltages from the accelerometer are proportional to
the acceleration. The magnitude and the direction of the
acceleration can be determined with the help of the phase-
sensitive demodulation techniques. The demodulator
output is amplified and brought off-chip through a 32 kΩ
resistor. The sensing of the three the X, Y, and Z axes is
carried out by the single structure of The ADXL335.
The accelerometer is calibrated to detect the position
of the arm. The human hand movement is consolidated at
three main positions. They are the upright position, down
position and slant position [2]. The values of accelerometer
output at every position is tabulated in the below table.
TABLE I: CALIBRATED READINGS OF
ACCELEROMETER
POSITION X Y Z
UPRIGHT 350 420 350
SLANT 400 350 350
DOWN 450 300 350
B. Sliding Potentiometer
A linear variable resistor with a total resistance of 10k
is taken as a slide potentiometer. As it is a potentiometer
the output is a variable voltage which can be generated by
varying the position of the lever. The output voltage will
range from 0 V to the VCC by varying the lever from one
side to the other side. The potentiometer has four grove
pins, three of them are connected to VCC, GND and the
ADC IN on the slide, while the remaining pin is connected
to a green indicator LED. The potentiometer change can be
indicated by an indicator. The model of the slide
potentiometer is given in the below figure.
The sensing glove needs a controller to process all the
data from the accelerometer and the slide potentiometer. It
also needs to communicate with the zig-bee module so that
the data can be wirelessly sent. The Arduino UNO board
is used for this control function. The Arduino Uno is a
microcontroller-based control board which is used as a
controller that can be programmed to execute a s et of
instructions based on the inputs given to the board. The
Uno board provides an open-source platform. An 8-
bit Atmel AVR microcontroller or a 32-bit Atmel ARM is
embedded into the Uno board. A boot loader allows
uploading of the programs into the microcontroller
memory without needing a chip (device) programmer and
this boot loader is pre-programmed. The Arduino Uno has
14 digital input/output pins wherein 6 used as PWM
outputs and 6 analog inputs, 16 MHz ceramic resonator, a
USB connection, a power jack, an ICSP header, a reset
button. The Arduino Uno board make use of the serial
communication.
The Arduino software includes a serial monitor for the
serial communication. This serial monitor allows the
simple textual data to be sent to and from the Arduino
board. The RX and TX LEDs on the board will flash when
data is being transmitted via the USB-to-serial chip and
USB connection to the computer. A Software Serial library
allows for serial communication on any of the Uno's digital
pins. The ATmega328 on the Arduino Uno comes pre-
burned with a boot loader with which a new code can be
uploaded to it without the use of an external hardware
programmer. The protocol STK500 is used for the
communication purpose. The connection diagram of the
Arduino and the accelerometer is given in the below figure
5.

Figure 4: Model of the slide potentiometer

The slide potentiometer is calibrated according to the Figure 5: Circuit Connection diagram of sensing glove
position of the fingers. The values of the accelerometer
output at every position is given in the below table. The flow chart for the control of the glove circuit is
given below in figure 6.
TABLE II: READINGS OF THE SLIDE
POTENTIOMETER
S.No. LENGTH VALUES
1 1.00 0.59
2 2.00 1.14
3 3.00 2.5
4 4.00 3.2
5 5.00 4.6

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2018 IEEE 4th International Symposium in Robotics and Manufacturing Automation (ROMA)
Figure 6: Flow chart for control of sensing gloves
IV.DESIGN OF ROBOTIC ARM
The construction of the mechanical assembly consisted
of the design of the arm and the design of the fingers. The
arm structure of metal plate as its base. A set of two clamps
were fixed at the two sides of the arm for the support. The
upper end of the clamps was fitted with the servo motors.
The servo motors are responsible for the up and down
movement of the arm. The entire body of the arm was
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constructed by thick aluminum plates. The aluminum
plates where used as they are light weight in construction
and it supports the weight of the palm and the fingers. The
fingers move such that the entire hand can pick an object.
So, the weight of the finger should be as light as possible
and also the structure should be rigid and not fragile. The
springs were used for the structure of the fingers. At the tip
of each finger, the metal strings were attached so that the
fingers can be actuated. The strings are then connected to
the shaft of the servo motors which are placed in the body
of the arm. To cover the entire hand and to have an aesthetic
look, the entire fingers and palm are covered with the
gloves. The major operations of the arm are
• up and down movement of the arm
• finger movement of the hand
(i) Actuation for the up and down movement of
the arm is given by servo motors and its shafts. The shaft
of the servo is attached directly to the body of the arm.
(ii) The strings from the fingers are directly
attached to the servo shaft and so when the shaft of the
servo is moved, the finger starts to move in a definite
position.
The precise control of the velocity, acceleration and the
angular position can be obtained with the help of a rotatory
actuator. One of the most widely used rotatory actuators is
the servomotor. The servomotor is a position feedback
system that is coupled to a suitable motor. A suitable
controller is required for the proper control of the position
feedback. The servomotors make use of the angular
position which is sensed using a sensor at the time of
operation. Robotics, CNC machinery or automated
manufacturing are some of the applications of the
servomotors.
A closed-loop servomechanism that uses position
feedback to control its motion and final position is used in
the servomotors. The input signal for the position
command can either be an analog or a digital signal. The
position and the speed feedback can be provided by an
encoder and this is paired with the motor. The measured
position of the output is compared to the command
position, the external input to the controller. The variation
in the output position generates an error signal and this
causes the motor to rotate in either direction. As the
positions approach, the error signal reduces to zero and the
motor stops. This type of servomotor is not widely used in
industrial motion control, but it forms the basis for radio-
controlled models. The servomotors can be enhanced with
a PID control algorithm for more precise control with less
overshooting. In general, the radio-controlled models
employ remote control devices like RC servos. These RC
servos provide actuation for the various mechanical
systems such as the steering of a car, the control surfaces
on a plane, or the rudder of a boat. A mechanically coupled
electric motor and a potentiometer form an RC servomotor.
2018 IEEE 4th International Symposium in Robotics and Manufacturing Automation (ROMA)

Figure 7: Mechanism of servo actuation

The servo receives the pulse-width modulation (PWM)

signal from a controller. The width of the pulse is translated
into a position. After receiving the command to rotate, the
motor is powered until the potentiometer reaches the value
corresponding to the commanded position.
The control technique of the arm is implemented by the
Arduino mega board. The servos which are used for the up
and down motion and the servos which are used for finger
motions are connected to this mega board [1]. The Mega
board gives the PWM inputs to the servo. The Arduino
Mega 2560 is a microcontroller is used for the control
function which is compatible with most shields. It has 16
MHz crystal oscillator, 54 digital input/output pins where
15 used as PWM outputs and 16 analog inputs. The
Arduino Mega 2560 uses serial communication. Similar to
the Uno board the ATmega2560 also comes with a pre-
burned bootloader that allows uploading the new code
without an external hardware programmer. The original
STK500 protocol is used for communication. The circuit
connection of the robotic arm is shown in the below figure.

Figure 9: Flow chart for control of the robotic arm

Figure 8: Circuit connections of the robotic arm
The flow chart for the control of robotic arm is shown
in the below figure 9.
V. WIRELESS COMMUNICATION
Zig-bee is a high-level communication protocol. This
high-level communication protocol can be used to create
personal area networks built from small, low-power digital
radios. IEEE 802.15 standard protocol is used for the Zig-
bee communication [4]. The data over long distances can be
transmitted through Zig-bee by passing data through
intermediate devices to reach more distant. The data
transmission rates can vary in the range from 20
kilobits/second in the 868 MHz frequency band to 250
kilobits/second in the 2.4 GHz frequency band [4]. As per
the IEEE 802.15 standard, the Zigbee network layer
natively supports both the star and tree typical networks
and the generic mesh networks. Zigbee builds upon the

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2018 IEEE 4th International Symposium in Robotics and Manufacturing Automation (ROMA)
physical layer and media access control. Zigbee consumes
less power and has a very long battery life. The ZigBee is
used in applications that require only a low data rate, low
power consumption, long battery life, and secure
networking.
A. XBEE S-2 Module
XBEE module is a ZigBee wireless module technology.
It is an inter-serial device to communicate with the
microcontroller. XBEE is a 2.4G's XBEE wireless module.
This module uses the 802.15.4 protocol stack through a
serial interface between the microcontroller and other
devices to communicate [7]. This module is simple and
convenient.
B. XBEE Shield
XBEE Shield is an enhanced Zigbee XBEE Series
module breakout board for Arduino. This shield allows
the Arduino board to communicate wirelessly
using Zigbee [7]. XCTU is a developer tool used for
communicating between the Arduino and the XBEE shield.
VI. HARDWARE STRUCTURE
The hardware structure of the sensing glove is
made up of the potentiometer and Arduino UNO board is
shown in the below figure.
Figure 10: Hardware structure of sensing gloves
The hardware structure of Robotic arm consists of
metal arm part with servo motors and Arduino ATMega is
shown in the below figure.
Figure 11: Hardware structure of the robotic arm
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VII.FUTURE SCOPE
The future scope of this project can be controlling the
arm from a distant location with the help of a camera and a
high range wireless transmission module. By this way, the
system can still accurately perform the task. The arm can
be fixed to a rover that provides the movement and can be
controlled wirelessly. This kind of system can find
application in bomb diffusion applications and fireworks
and match industries.
VIII.CONCLUSION
The gestures of the human hand can be replicated in an
easier and cost-effective method. It also involves the
implementation of the Zigbee protocol to send the data
wirelessly from the human hand to the robotic arm. The
gesture-controlled robot along with a PID controller can be
used for more accurate and precise control. The various
applications covered by this robot includes fireworks
handling and bomb diffusing where human life is at risk. In
the fireworks industry, it is a low-cost solution problem and
it reduces the risk of the human life. The robot can be used
in industries to yield more production rate with utmost
accuracy.
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