6-DOF PC-Based Robotic Arm (PC-ROBOARM) with efficient trajectory planning and speed control

Over the past decades, design and control a robotic arm is not an easy job. Many consideration need to be taken care while designing and controlling robotic arm. In addition, different robotic arm design may lead to different control solution. Furthermore, it is difficult for the robotic arm to follow the assigned geometry path in high precision and accuracy manner. This paper introduces the design and development of 6-DOF (degree of freedom) PC-Based Robotic Arm (PC-ROBOARM). The main context of the study is concerning a 6-DOF robotic arm, which is modeled as three-link, with each joint connected with a suitable servomotor. The robotic arm design and control solution is implemented by self developed computer software which is named as SMART ARM. It is a computer aided design and control solution for 6-DOF robotic arm which come with an user friendly graphical user interface (GUI). It allows user to model or design virtual robotic arm before building the real one. Therefore, the user can estimate the optimum size of actual robotic arm at the beginning so as to minimize the building cost and suite the practical environment. Furthermore, once the actual robotic arm has been built, the user can reuse the software to control the actual robotic arm in an effortless way without wasting time in constructing new control solution. The software also provides simulation feature. Through simulation in the GUI, the software assists greatly in visualizing the robotic arm trajectory planning. The PC-ROBOARM is actual robotic arm developed to prove the simulation results. The 6-DOF robotic arm design is based on PUMA (Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly) jointed-arm model. Both point-to-point motion and continuous path motion are tested in simulation and actual arm controls.