Educational Robot Arm Development

A robot is a complex machine that involves the conjunction of many technologies working harmoniously together to provide to the final user, a nice interface to interact. The kind of problems need to be solved to have a robotic arm involves overcoming lateral loads, power consumption, solution of kinematics equations, etc. Peter Corke's Robotics Toolbox [1] is a computer library useful to design, model, visualize and simulate a robot and it is widely utilized in the present study. This paper describes the design process and construction of a 4-DOF robotic arm, involving CAD, CAM, electronics, and Matlab's Robotics Toolbox to solve kinematics. It constitutes a low-cost platform, in a process of permanent improvement, for the study of laboratory courses of design, manufacturing, electronics and robotics, essentials for many engineering curriculums. The platform provides the student with hands-on experience that consolidates classroom lectures.