Design, Control and Inverse Kinematics of Robotic Arm
Automation has taken over the world, nowadays robots are doing almost everything that humans previously did like painting, welding, manufacturing and serving. Many times, they do it better than the human beings. Pakistan lags behind the world in development of such robots. One of the reasons that su
2025-06-28 16:31:59 - Adil Khan
Design, Control and Inverse Kinematics of Robotic Arm
Project Area of Specialization RoboticsProject Summary| Automation has taken over the world, nowadays robots are doing almost everything that humans previously did like painting, welding, manufacturing and serving. Many times, they do it better than the human beings. Pakistan lags behind the world in development of such robots. One of the reasons that such robotic platforms are not widely developed and implemented is the lack of understanding of fundamental concepts of forward and inverse kinematics. Even at university level, students fail to fully understand these basic concepts. In this project, we will develop a robotic arm primarily for teaching kinematics concepts to undergraduate students. The students will be able to learn kinematics interactively and will be able to transform this knowledge into development of robotic platforms for various purposes. A 3 degree of freedom pick and place articulated serial robotic arm with servo motors at each joint and Raspberry Pi as the controller shall be developed. The robot will determine the location of the target using a camera. The image will be processed using OpenCV library, which will output location coordinates of the object. The inverse kinematics model will be specifically developed for the robotic arm in MATLAB/Python. The calculations will be displayed on computer screen using an easy to understand graphical user interface (GUI). The block diagram of the system is shown in Figure 1.
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Automation has taken over the world, nowadays robots are doing almost everything that humans previously did like painting, welding, manufacturing and serving. Many times, they do it better than the human beings. Pakistan lags behind the world in development of such robots. One of the reasons that such robotic platforms are not widely developed and implemented is the lack of understanding of fundamental concepts of forward and inverse kinematics. Even at university level, students fail to fully understand these basic concepts. In this project, we will develop a robotic arm primarily for teaching kinematics concepts to undergraduate students. The students will be able to learn kinematics interactively and will be able to transform this knowledge into development of robotic platforms for various purposes. A 3 degree of freedom pick and place articulated serial robotic arm with servo motors at each joint and Raspberry Pi as the controller shall be developed. The robot will determine the location of the target using a camera. The image will be processed using OpenCV library, which will output location coordinates of the object. The inverse kinematics model will be specifically developed for the robotic arm in MATLAB/Python. The calculations will be displayed on computer screen using an easy to understand graphical user interface (GUI).
The block diagram of the system is shown in Figure 1.
We aim to design, develop and control a 3-DOF robotic arm. The key objectives of this project are stated below:
- To design a 3-DOF robotic arm
- To develop the designed robotic arm
- To incorporate inverse kinematics through vision
Our project starts with the design of 3-DOF robotic arm with a defined workspace. The minimum and maximum reach of the arm; after modeling the CAD design will be used to develop the robotic arm. 3 HS-755HB Servo motors will be used to control the robotic arm. Raspberry PI is used as the brain of the robotic arm. A camera captures the image and sends it to controller. If object of required color and shape is detected in the workspace then location coordinates of the object are calculated using Python library opencv. These coordinates are then fed to the specifically developed model for calculations of required joint angles. Python will used to develop the inverse kinematics code since it is free, easy and powerful. Once all the computations are done, the raspberry pi sends signals to the servo motors and the robotic arm picks up the desired object and places it on the predefined destination. The effectiveness of the robot arm to teach inverse kinematics will be measured by a purposefully developed survey form. This survey form will be filled by trainees after using this robot.
A flow chart is shown in the Figure 2:
Robotic arms can be effectively used to teach inverse kinematics to students, Using this knowledge, coupled with the knowledge acquired in other subjects, students will be able to design and develop robotic arms which are present in almost every industry in some form or another.
Educational Tool: The robotic arm shall be used to teach inverse kinematics interactively using a GUI.
Industrial Robot: Picking and placing of an object is required in many industries. This process may be automated using robotic arms. Hence, the developed robotic arm may be used as an industrial robot.
Technical Details of Final DeliverableThe final product has an approximately 2’-5” by 3’ base with a robotic arm at one of the corners that uses 3 HS-755HB Servo motors, and a servo driver such as PCA9685 16 channel Servo controller. A Camera is mounted overhead for a complete view of the workspace. The Raspberry Pi is mounted separately alongside the peripheral on the same base as Robotic arm. Raspberry PI and the peripheral are all powered Separately. The algorithms will be implement using Python programming language within the Raspberry Pi.
Final Deliverable of the Project HW/SW integrated systemCore Industry EducationOther Industries Manufacturing Core Technology RoboticsOther Technologies Artificial Intelligence(AI)Sustainable Development Goals Quality Education, Industry, Innovation and InfrastructureRequired Resources| Elapsed time in (days or weeks or month or quarter) since start of the project | Milestone | Deliverable |
|---|---|---|
| Month 1 | Back Study (I) | in Progress |
| Month 2 | Background study (II) | Literature review |
| Month 3 | Hardware Selection | List of hardware selected |
| Month 4 | Hardware Purchasing | List of hardware purchased |
| Month 5 | Design and simulation of robotic arm (I) | In Progress |
| Month 6 | Design and simulation of robotic arm (II) | Design and simulation report |
| Month 7 | Development (I) | In Progress |
| Month 8 | Development (II) | Developed robotic arm |
| Month 9 | Validation | Validation report: Accuracy and precision of the arm |
| Month 10 | Robotic arm effectiveness (I) | In Progress |
| Month 11 | Robotic arm effectiveness (II) | Feedback from students using survey form |
| Month 12 | Write-up | Final report with complete description |