Robotics
The R6 Robotic Arm Project
My plan here is to bring to life the R6 Robotic Arm that I discovered at 3D Warehouse
27/11/2011
Not too much at the moment... just the beginnings of the arm base, and (of course) my good old Virtual Workbench, and a little cube for collision testing and mouse interactivity.
My aim with this project is to produce an interactive robotic arm which can be "taught" and user-programmed by means of a script.
My aim with this project is to produce an interactive robotic arm which can be "taught" and user-programmed by means of a script.
You can download Phase01 of this project so that you have a chance to get aquainted with the mouse interactivity.....the little cube can be picked up and placed anywhere on the arm base. The upper part of the arm base can be rotated using the mouse....... place the mouse cursor on the upper part, the cursor will change color to green, hold down the right mouse button, the cursor will change to a "pushing hand", press key [3] or [4] to rotate.
Help can be displayed at any time by holding down the [F1] key.
Help can be displayed at any time by holding down the [F1] key.

roboticarm_installer.zip | |
File Size: | 6536 kb |
File Type: | zip |
03/12/2011
Upper and lower arm have now been added.
So, thus far, we have :
one servo motor, anchored to the lower base, to control rotation of the whole arm,
two servo motors, anchored to the rotating upper base, to control raising/lowering of the upper arm.
one servo motor, anchored to the lower arm, to control the raising/lowering of that arm.
and another servo motor, also anchored to the lower arm, to control raising/lowering of the wrist.
To complete the structure, the wrist and gripper has still to be added..
So, thus far, we have :
one servo motor, anchored to the lower base, to control rotation of the whole arm,
two servo motors, anchored to the rotating upper base, to control raising/lowering of the upper arm.
one servo motor, anchored to the lower arm, to control the raising/lowering of that arm.
and another servo motor, also anchored to the lower arm, to control raising/lowering of the wrist.
To complete the structure, the wrist and gripper has still to be added..
15/12/2011
Phase01,the consruction phase, is now complete, and a start has been made on Phase02, the testing of the individual servo operations. To do this, I've rigged up a Remote Control interface which enables me to switch each servo on/off individually. Not the best means of getting the arm to do what I want, but it does let me see where the major hiccups lie, and where to make fine adjustments.
And a video clip :
25/05/2012
Ok, after some major parameter tweaking, I now have a version which is a great deal more stable. So much so, in fact, that I am releasing it as freely downloadable demo. On playing with the demo, you will quickly come to realise that manipulating a robotic arm by means of remote control of the individual motor servos requires a fair amount of precision topped with a fair degree of patience! Thus, the next phase (Phase03) will be looking at recording and playback of a set of user-defined movements, and Phase04 will be looking at inverse kinematics (i.e. grabbing the grippers and moving them to the target position, with, hopefully, the remainder of the arm following automatically)

roboticarmdemo_installer.zip | |
File Size: | 12707 kb |
File Type: | zip |