Kinect Based Gesture Controlled Robotic Arm: A research work at HuT Labs

Undergraduate (UG) Research is the first step in a students' life to taste the experience of a research work. It is also a unique experience for the teachers to guide the students in research work during their UG study. In this paper we want to share our research experience through the project that involves the building of a Robotic arm which mimics the motion of the human arm of the user at Humanitarian Technology (HuT) Labs of Amrita. The system monitors the motion of the user's arm using a Kinect. The skeletal image of the arm obtained using the "Kinect Skeletal Image" project of Kinect SDK, consists of 3 joints and links connecting them. Coordinate Geometry is used to calculate the angles between the links connecting the joints. This gives us the angles for a 3D representation of the human arm. The angles thus obtained are sent using a serial communication port to the Arduino microcontroller, which in turn generates signals which are sent to the servo motors. The servo motors rotate according the angles given as input. The combined motion of the servos results in a complete Robotic arm movement which is a mimic of the human arm movement.