Research Paper On A Smart Robotic Arm

The robotic arm is a issue which is being researched by due to problems facing in day to day life. Nowadays there are variety of robotic arms available in the market. This research was done to overcome the real-time problems. This paper includes the work of robotic arm and in which field it can be used. Now this arm can be used to overcome some of the real-time problems we face in our daily life.

Introduction

As the technology is advancing day by day robots are replacing humans to perform the repetitive tasks. Mainly this invention in which more than two fields such as mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, computer science engineering are combined to perform different tasks in a single machine. It can be fixed or movable depending upon the purpose of use. Nowadays in this fast growing industrial age every company needs speed in manufacturing to meet the customer’s requirements. The basic objective of our project is to develop a versatile and low cost robotic arm. The arms can be autonomous or controlled manually in number of application by changing the program of controller and the structure is designed in such a way that it is capable to perform variety of tasks with great accuracy in kitchen such as cutting, chopping, griping etc. Our robotic manipulator would be used mainly for industrial and home applications. Here we propose to build a robotic arm which can do work of human arm i. e. The motors used in making of our arm works on 3Degree of Freedom (DOF).

In this new invention the robotic arm is designed to perform various tasks. As this arm is built for the kitchen purpose i. e. it can cut and chop the vegetables, fruits etc. This reduces the time consumed in doing kitchen work. It can be used in more purposes. The robotic arm can be fixed or mobile (i. e. wheeled) and can be designed for industrial and home applications. It will work on DC motor that will acquire half of horsepower. This idea of the arm is proposed to overcome the problems such as reduce human effort, and to have accuracy.

Previous works

Kamatsu Ltd. previously worked on this issue in 1986 and made a arm which was usable for an industrial robot which was able to improve the reacability of the robot to distinctive angles and portions of the workshops where work was done. After some year in 2006 Rodriguez, N, E, et. Adapted this to an another level by using infrared sensors to control its movements. And by using Visual Basic they developed to have a graphic interface. But there was a flaw in this that it can only controlled in limited range.

The overall setup of the robotic arm can be controlled by a personal computer by installing Arduino software in it or it can be controlled at a large distance with the assistance of an app wirelessly. It can also be controlled by a person manually with help of arduino boards and personal computer. These arms are built to overcome the problems we face in our daily life in kitchen like cutting, chopping, mixing etc. These arms are able to do work of kitchen with accuracy and can lift weight upto 2kgs. These are made in a way so they can be fixed easily with minimum cost and requires very less amount of maintenance. This Robotic Arm consists of 2 servo motors, 4 DC motors, a pair of gears which help this arm to move freely in any direction without any obstruction. This Robotic Arm works on 3 Degree of Freedom (DOF) which is great thing according to do work in kitchen and this arm can also be used in hotel industry for saving time in kitchen work. This Arm is controlled by Arduino board using Arduino software installed in personal computer systems.

Equipment used

Arduino: Open-source electronic prototyping platform enabling users to create interactive electronic objects.

Servo motors: A servomotor is a rotary actuator or linear actuator that allows for precise control of angular or servomotor is not widely used in industrial motion control, but it forms the basis of the simple and cheap servos used for radio-controlled models.

L298n motor: The LN298 is a high voltage, high current, dual full-bridge motor driver designed to accept standard TTL logic levels and drive inductive loads.

Gear box: The gear box is the second element of the power train in an automobile. It is used to change the speed and torque of vehicle according to variety of road and load condition.

Side shaft geared motor: Side Shaft DC Gear Motor is suitable for large robots / automation systems. It has sturdy construction with gear box built to handle stall torque produced by the motor.

This arm is made at a very low cost as it can be made on large scale because the material we have used is easily available but need some labor to make it. We can use this arm in hotel industry which is beneficial for this industry as it is one time investment and takes very low amount on maintenance. This will help them doing their work faster and with great accuracy without any hassle.

Working

As we said robotic arm can be operated through an app. It has a GUI which helps a user to use this app efficiently and conveniently. It allows user to choose whether he/she has to cut fruits or vegetable if fruits than which type of fruits, if vegetable than which type of vegetable and how it should be cut. If user wants to chop something there are further more options available in this app which is communicable through far away. This arm is able to cut all types of fruits and vegetables. In future with the help of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning we can also improve this efficiency by using it with image detection algorithms to to do this work more accurately and at a good rate.

There are few elements which are used to make this arm working:

1. DC Motors: DC Motors were used to rotate the elbow of the arm to a certain angle to which a normal can’t move his/her arm easily which allows this arm to do things in a better way.
2. Servo Motors: Servo motors are used to in the wrists of these arms to rotate the wrists at 360 degrees which we can’t do. So it’s also a new feature which will help us to work in our kitchen work or in hotel industry it will be a good machine to replace with.
3. L298n: It is also a motor which allows the hands and arms to lift the load so that gripper could hold it tight to make a cut properly.
4. Arduino Board: It allows us to program the arm easily and in a very nice so that it improves the function of arms and make it work. This board helps us to convey our messages to arms to do what and after how much time.
5. Gears: These gears help arms to move freely even with a loaded gripper which provides us accurate cutting with a good rate of speed which save time.
6. Arduino Software: This software is installed in the personal computer systems through which we give commands to the robotic arm on which fruit to cut or which vegetable to cut. To give commands to arduino boards we have to make a program in an arduino software.

As the proximity sensor is used to sense the objects in front of arm. It activates when some job given to the Arm. It makes sure that if there is any human body part coming in between the cutting & chopping task then it will sense human being in between so it will be automatically stopped until human being is not replaced.

So this make sure that it will not harm any human being in between its task but when we work in the kitchen sometime we get a cut while cutting things so like these are some common injuries we get in our home but while working with this arm there is no chance of having these type of injuries.

Results

This arm is designed to use in kitchen and hotel industry and is able to cut and chop fruit & vegetables with accuracy, speed, without harming anybody.

Conclusion

This Robotic Arm is a successful development as we are moving to wireless from wired which is much easier way of controlling/communication with less hassle. The App was invented to provide a facility to the user of having wireless feature with which we are having a great GUI as it is important for the user to communicate with the system. Last but not the least this app helps the user to choose which fruit/vegetable to be cut and in which manner and also helps in controlling movement of the robotic arm. As the technology is growing day by day, in future we can enhance this wireless system with the help of Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning. The algorithms can find the many things to enhance like image-detection, object-detection, train data etc.