Design and development of co-ordinate based autonomous robotic arm

Task level robot systems have long been a goal of robotics research. This paper discusses a project to design and develop a humanoid robotic arm which could reach a particular position defined by the specific set of co-ordinates, pick up the object and place it at the target location defined by another set of co-ordinates, in a well defined hemi-spherical 3D space. The developed prototype provides total 5 Degrees of freedom within the robotic arm. Micro servo motors are used as principle actuators. The arm is controlled by a computer thorough a simple user interface application developed in basic Rapid Application Development (RAD) software. The object position and destination co-ordinates are entered in the user-interface application and the object is grabbed using the gripper. A manual over-ride control is also provided in which the movement of the robotic arm can be controlled using a manual control panel.