Robot Arm on a Moving Car

2022 ELE Engineering Design Project (XF13)

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Faculty Lab Coordinator

Xavier Fernando

Topic Category

Consumer Products/Applications

Preamble

When it comes to automated manufacturing, robot arms play a big role with so many applications. They are often used for welding, assembling, packing, painting, pick and place tasks and much more. The moving arm shall be attached to a robot car for mobility. One problem with a moving car with normal wheels is that it can move only back-and-forth and turning requires larger area. Ideally the moving car should be able to move in any direction easily. This is possible if it employs onmidirectional wheels or mecanum wheels.

Objective

The objective of this project is to design a robot car capable of moving in any direction equipped with a moving arm that can pick-up and place small objects. The arm and the car shall be controlled by voice commands.

Partial Specifications

The robot arm should be controlled wirelessly via a smartphone and a custom build Android application.

The cellphone App shall recognize basic voice commands.

The robot car should also be separately and remotely controlled.

We should be able to record the movements of the robot so that it can automatically repeat them.

Suggested Approach

This project will consist of a robotic arm made out of 3D printed parts and, servo motors joints. The robot arm has 5 degrees of freedom, so we need 5 servo motors, plus an additional servo for the gripper mechanism. A Bluetooth module can be used for the communication with the smartphone.

The base is an Arduino robot car which employs mecanum wheels which enable it to move in any direction. The wheels are attached on four stepper motors which are individually controlled. By rotating the wheels in certain pattern, they exert diagonal forces due the diagonally position rollers on the circumference of the wheels, and so they can move in any direction. The car shall be remotely controlled via either a Bluetooth communication and an custom build Android application, or using an DIY RC transmitter with the help of the NRF24L01 transceiver module.

See https://howtomechatronics.com/arduino-projects/ and https://hackaday.io/project/181-mearm-your-robot

for similar projects.

Group Responsibilities

The whole group is responsible for the successful completion, integration and testing of the overall project.

Student A Responsibilities

Robotic arm with 5 degrees of freedom

Student B Responsibilities

Robotic car with mecanum wheels.

Student C Responsibilities

Smartphone App and voice recognition

Student D Responsibilities

Wireless control of the car and software

Course Co-requisites

To ALL EDP Students

Due to COVID-19 pandemic, in the event University is not open for in-class/in-lab activities during the Winter term, your EDP topic specifications, requirements, implementations, and assessment methods will be adjusted by your FLCs at their discretion.