CE Project: Robotic Arm for assisting humans

[ash]

The contest idea is interesting, but to say that the winner must lead the project may prove to be a bit of a burden for him/her Well, regardless of contest or not, is there ANY one who would like to volunteer to lead this? He/she doesnt need to be the design expert.. just someone who can facilitate discussions and ideas. The crux of collaboration is that all ideas is shared and deliberated upon.

Docel, its apparent you have vast experience in this type of projects. Perhaps you can give some design ideas?

We don't have to start from the beginning. There are some nice ideas in this thread already. Jazlan, for example, has contributed some reachable ideas in which we can follow.

The image processing stuff can be saved for later. AT least, if we ever reach that point, we can quickly dig the info back up

So, our objective remains the same. We want to have a robot to assist the human somehow. Lock O's has said, perhaps a fetch bot:

A robot to pick up items on the ground and move them to a sitting person's reach.

Maybe we can still extend it to a table surface as well. But, lets deal with assumption questions I mentioned in one of my previous posts:

1. What is the maximum load of the object to be carried?
2. How far and high should the arm be extended?
3. Should the response be quick?

After those assumptions, and finalization of objectives, that would narrow down the design scope. What I'm sure people would love is a darn sketch or diagram

[docel]

I'm game, Ash !
I always start things from scratch and move up to improvisations. That way people start making something. This will lead to a lot of practical skills and the experience eggs you on to improvise. Most students havent done anything practical independently till now, simply because there was neither a chance or opportunity or motivation to do so. In time, they hesitate to start anything by themselves.

So: just give them an opening......

A construction project does the job, provided there are consistent Forum visitors. The visitors are sporadic due to various reasons. One of the reason is the academic Project time. That is when they are suddenly active and flit around trying to find a project they can do. A couple of weeks and they fall prey to unscrupulous 'ready made project' vendors and disappear.

Now, the Project time is approaching and the guys are dabbling around with ideas between the AUV and the Mars rover.......

Before they disappear, lets give them a hands-on construction project so that they hang around!!!

I can lead the way with a Build project, if I have a Quorum here.

[mad_scientist]

Instead of using expensive servos, you should consider using shape memory alloys (like Ni-Ti alloy). A typical wire costs between $ 2.5 - $ 9/ft (Source - http://www.imagesco.com/catalog/nitinol/index.html). So even if you have to use 10 feet of wire it works out to be $80 roughly.

Some robotic arms based on SMAs

Mobile Robotic Arm by Syed Ross Farooq
http://faculty.washington.edu/devasi...ring_2005.mpeg
Robotic Muscles
ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/6536/17442/00804917.pdf?arnumber=804917

[ash]

Instead of using expensive servos, you should consider using shape memory alloys (like Ni-Ti alloy). A typical wire costs between $ 2.5 - $ 9/ft (Source - Nitinol Product Index - Images Scientific Instruments Inc.). So even if you have to use 10 feet of wire it works out to be $80 roughly.

Some robotic arms based on SMAs

Mobile Robotic Arm by Syed Ross Farooq
http://faculty.washington.edu/devasi...ring_2005.mpeg
Robotic Muscles
ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/6536/17442/00804917.pdf?arnumber=804917

Yep, I did think about that for a while, but SMA's are an overkill for our first prototype. SMA's in robotic arm application are usually used to closely mimic human muscle movements.

Servos are good enough for us. Personally, I feel SMA requires more research and time before we can implement them successfully, which includes figuring out how to accurately bend them under various environmental conditions (temperature, etc).

But, thanks for the info. We'll keep SMA for future use. It's easier to design the arm around servos and later upgrade to SMA than the other way round.

[ash]

*bump*

Any volunteers to design a simple robotic arm? Google SketchUp is quite easy to use

[kashish0711]

I saw something similar a few weeks ago on television in which the human arm was replaced by a robotic arm and all the joints and all were artificial and they moved with the smae speed and control that a normal arm would have.

This thread is awesome. way to go friends, gonna go through all the pages in detail in a minute.

[ash]

Haha, thanks for bumping this thread.

We want to start off with something simple first before we jump into the realm of human prosthetic robot arms.

What we need now is some sort of basic design to look at. I'm a bit tired of on going discussions without diagrams and pictures

Again, we begin with a robotic arm that can be remotely controlled, and can pick up an object. Arm will consist of the base, the elbow, wrist and finally the gripper.

Later, we can add autonomous features and sophisticated image processing means. But I stress "later"