A Low Cost Manipulator Training Set

Abstract

Manipulators serve worldwide to increase quality requirements and speed up the production of the manufacturing industry. Typical applications of manipulators include welding painting ironing assembly picking and placing product inspection. In this study we focus on designing and implementing a low-cost training manipulator set for Robotic and Control Laboratory in the University. The set includes two 6-DOF manipulators controlled in coordination by Raspberry PI computer using Codesys platform. Manipulators can move to the desired coordinates through forward kinematic calculations The link transformation matrices for each joint are obtained by the Denavit-Hartenberg (DH) conventions. Due to complexity of transformation matrices Matlab program is used to solve the matrix equations and the calculation results are transferred to Codesys environment. Codesys control application creates a virtual PLC functionality for Raspberry PI that communicates with servo control board by (IC)-C-2 communication protocol. Servo control board generates Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) signals applied to servo driver motors for obtaining the desired movements. In order to ease the user-manipulator interactions a web-based interface is developed for running on a tablet PC or smart phones. Students use the set successfully for various practices in the laboratory.