Introduction

1.1 Introduction

Nowadays, robots are increasingly being integrated into working tasks to replace humans
especially to perform the repetitive task. In general, robotics can be divided into two areas,
industrial and service robotics. These robots are currently used in many fields of applications
including office, military tasks, hospital operations, dangerous environment and agriculture.
Besides, it might be difficult or dangerous for humans to do some specific tasks like picking up
explosive chemicals, defusing bombs or in worst case scenario to pick and place the bomb
somewhere for containment and for repeated pick and place action in industries. Therefore, a
robot can be replaced human to do work.

1.2 Robotic arm definition

A robotic arm is a robot manipulator and a mechanical arm, usually programmable, with similar
functions to a human arm. The links of such a manipulator are connected by joints allowing
either rotational motion (such as in an articulated robot) or translational (linear) displacement.
The links of the manipulator can be considered to form a kinematic chain. The business end of
the kinematic chain of the manipulator is called the end effectors and it is analogous to the
human hand. The end effectors can be designed to perform any desired task such as welding,
gripping, spinning etc., depending on the application. The robot arms can be autonomous or
controlled manually and can be used to perform a variety of tasks with great accuracy. The
robotic arm can be fixed or mobile (i.e. wheeled) and can be designed for industrial or home
applications.

Problem description and Proposed solution

It is true that human arms can do many works at a time but it always involves risk of injury
during work involving lifting of heavy items and picking of radioactive substances. Moreover,
medical industry need an arm for people who lost it in accidents. Also , it is seen that efficiency
of a person decreases as his age advances due to which one involved in rough work becomes
unproductive and inefficient .
In manufacturing industry and nuclear industry, a large fraction of the work is repetitive and
judicious application of automation will most certainly result in optimum utilization of machine
and manpower. A pneumatic `Pick and Place' Robot has been developed to achieve automation
in applications where great sophistication is not needed and simple tasks like picking up of small
parts at one location and placing them at another location can be done with great ease.

This robot is a mechanical arm, a manipulator designed to perform many different tasks and
capable of repeated, variable programming.
To perform its assigned tasks, the robot moves parts, objects, tools, and special devices by means
of programmed motions and points. The robotic arm performs motions in space. Its function is to
transfer objects or tools from point to point, as instructed by the controller.

Robotic arm is an asset for those people who are involved in nuclear industry as by robotic arms,
picking of the radio substances can be done by the instructions given by them and they don’t
have to physical go at the site and pick these harmful substances. Also in manufacturing industry
risk of injury is prevented as now these robotic arms are involved in doing repetitive work and
people of all age can control it without any loss in efficiency.

Working of system and demonstration

A manually controlled robotic arm will have to include the elements listed below in order to
perform its function:

1. Servo motors

2. joy sticks

3. Arduino UNO

4. Bluetooth module.

5. Connecting wires
 6.mearm kit (hardware)

1.Servo motors-Servo refers to an error sensing feedback control which is used to correct
the performance of a system. Servo or RC Servo Motors are DC motors equipped with a
servo mechanism for precise control of angular position. The RC servo motors usually have
a rotation limit from 90° to 180°. But servos do not rotate continually. Their rotation is
restricted in between the fixed angles. The Servos are used for precision positioning. They
are used in robotic arms and legs, sensor scanners and in RC toys like RC helicopter,
airplanes and cars. The specifications for big Servomotor used are as follows:

 Weight- 55g

 Dimension- 40.7*19.7*42.9mm

 Stall torque- 10kg/cm

 Operating speed-0.20sec/60degree(4.8v)

 Operating voltage 4.8-7.2V.

 Temperature range 0-55 degrees.

The specifications for small Servomotor G9 used are as follows:

 Weight: 9 g

 Dimension: 22.2 x 11.8 x 31 mm approx.

 Stall torque: 1.8 kgf·cm

• Operating speed: 0.1 s/60 degree

 Operating voltage: 4.8 V (~5V)

 Dead band width: 10 µs

 Temperature range: 0 ºC – 55 ºC

2. Joy sticks-The joystick in the picture is nothing but two potentiometers that allow us to
measure the movement of the stick in 2-D. Potentiometers are variable resistors and, in a way,
 they act as sensors providing us with a variable voltage depending on the rotation of the device
around its shaft.

3.Arduino UNO-Arduino Uno is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega328P . It has

14 digital input/output pins (of which 6 can be used as PWM outputs), 6 analog inputs, a 16
MHz quartz crystal, a USB connection, a power jack and a reset button. It contains
everything needed to support the microcontroller; simply connect it to a computer with a
USB cable or power it with a AC-to-DC adapter or battery to get started.. You can tinker
with your UNO without worrying too much about doing something wrong, worst case
scenario you can replace the chip for a few dollars and start over again

4.Mearm kit-The MeArm is a Pocket Sized Robot Arm. It's a project started in February 2014,
which has had a fantastically fast journey to its present state thanks to it Open Development as
an Open Hardware projectThe parts we use here are:

 Base - largest part you'll have

 Collar - one of the four supplied
 Square servo mount - fits directly into the hole on the base
 4 x 20mm Screws
 4 x Nuts
 2 x 8mm Screws
 4 x Sticky Feet
 1 x Servo

If you have one of ours with a slick etch on it, you'll want that upper most. That is the top.
Otherwise either way is fine. Stick one of the four sticky feet in each of the corners of the base.
Then start inserting the 20mm screws into the holes around the large square hole.

Now twist the nuts onto the 20mm screws from the top side until you're about half way down.

5.Blootooth module HC-05-HC‐05 module is an easy to use Bluetooth SPP (Serial Port
Protocol) module, designed for transparent wireless serial connection setup .The HC-05
Bluetooth Module can be used in a Master or Slave configuration, making it a great solution for
wireless communication .This serial port bluetooth module is fully qualified Bluetooth
V2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)3Mbps Modulation with complete 2.4GHz radio transceiver
and baseband. It uses CSR Bluecore 04‐External single chip bluetooth system with CMOS
technology and with AFH.

Mechanical design-Mechanical Structure of the Arm:

In constructing our arm, we made use of five servo motors and a dc motors and gears since our
structure is a three dimensional structure. A typical prototype that we employed is as shown in
Figure. There is a servo motor at the base, which allows for circular movement of the whole
Structure; another at the shoulder which allows for upward and downward movement of the
Arm; while at last dc motor at the wrist allows for the picking of objects by the magnetic hand
Degrees of Freedom (DOF)- A degree of freedom is a joint on the arm, a place where it can bend
or rotate or translate. We can typically identify the number of degrees of freedom by the number
of actuators on the robot arm (in case of serial arms). The gripper is often complex with multiple
DOF or can be a toll for welding etc., so for simplicity it is treated as separate subsystem in basic
robot arm design. Robot Workspace (Work Volume) The robot workspace (sometimes known as
reachable space) is a collection of points that the end effector (gripper) can reach. The workspace
is dependent on the DOF angle/translation limitations, the arm link lengths, the angle at which
something must be picked up at, etc. The
workspace is highly dependent on the
robot configuration. It should be noted
that it does not include the DOF which
controls the wrist orientation as the
workspace is independent of orientation
variable. The shoulder and elbow joints
rotate a maximum of 180 degrees. Now
rotating that by the base joints another 180 degrees to get 3D work volume. This creates a
workspace of a shelled quarter sphere as shown below. If you change the link lengths you can get
very different sizes of workspaces, but this would be the general shape. Any location outside of
this space is a location the arm can’t reach. If there are objects in the way of the arm, the
workspace can get even more complicated. Here are a few more robot workspace examples:
Cartesian Gantry Robot Arm Cylindrical Robot Arm Spherical Robot Arm The workspace for
our serial arm can be mathematically described in polar coordinates as: , where

L1 and L2 represent the lengths of link 1 and link 2 respectively and r denotes the polar distance
Similarly, L1 = 9.2cm L2 = 11.5cm
Approximate budget:

Component Quantity Price Total

Price
1. Servo motors 5
2. joy sticks 2

3. Bluetooth 1 300
module(HC-05)
4.mearm kit 1 2285

Total 2585
cost

Future Scope of the robotic arm

 The machine will be of great use to perform repetitive tasks of picking and placing
of small parts (up to 500 gms) in an industrial production line.

 Its use can be extended and exploited by few modifications to do difficult and
 hazardous tasks for industrial applications.

 It can be used to do small assembly work effectively due to its great added accuracy
for placement of parts, which is further extended scope of our project.