Economic 6-DOF robotic manipulator hardware design for research and education

This work proposes economic design of robotic manipulator hardware for education and laboratory experiment purposes. This prototype can be used for conducting experiments and validation of various control strategies like robust control design, artificial intelligence-based control design, vision-based control, etc. Designed 6-DOF robotic manipulator is connected to the computer system through Arduino board, which acts as a communication device. High torque DC servo motors are used to control each joint of the manipulator. Frame of the manipulator is designed with mild steel brackets. Robot operating system (ROS), an open-source meta operating system is used to control and perform series of operations on a robotic manipulator. Robotic manipulator is configured and controlled using the MoveIt package. MoveIt will plan the trajectory using inverse kinematics for desired goal state and the same can be visualized through Rviz. Experiment results show that robotic manipulator prototype successfully follow the trajectory planned by the MoveIt and reached to the desired goal state. Because of open-source alternatives like ROS, cost of the prototype design is economical and hence, the prototype can be utilized for experimental validation in research and laboratory purpose.