DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF A PERSONAL COMPUTER-CONTROLLED PICK AND PLACE ROBOT WITH MATLAB SIMULATION
Keywords:
Robotic Arm, Matlab GUI, Microcontrollers, Sliding Bars, Movement Co-Ordinates.Abstract
As the industrial sector faces great pressure due to the high demand for goods and services, most industries have switched their operations from manned operations to full-scale Automation and Control Engineering, and the heart of this automation is the Robot. The Robot’s arm will be controlled by a human operator using a GUI designed with Matlab and running on a PC. The operator will have the ability to input the exact coordinates of the object to be handled by the arm or to use sliding bars on the GUI to control the extent of movement of the arm. The robotic arm was simulated using a GUI designed with Matlab. The simulation was such that the arm could be rotated to any direction within its allowable range of operation by sliding the bars provided for each servomotor at each joint. This study explains how to design and construct a robotic arm to simulate simple movements like pick and place operations. Research can be made on other available faster Microcontrollers that can be used straight away without the need for conversion or step down of signal. A breakthrough in this area would greatly increase the speed of movement of the robot.
