armBOT Operation

Due to the distance learning situation with COVID-19, it is hard for students from all over the world to work offline together. In order to help our students get familiar with the armbot and Arduino more quickly and efficiently, we buy this 6-DOF armbot online. As for the operation part in the whole armbot project, it can be divided into three stages for our three months learning process. Firstly, what we did was to follow the provided instruction and make the armbot move. We can control it with the Micro Control Unit(MCU), the PS2 joystick, and the Arduino. Then after figuring out the original way of controlling it, we stepped into the secondary development stage. We try to control it with our codes in the Arduino. We can define the position for each servo motor and they can do the action. Finally, the third stage is about combining it with the sensors, we should use the sensor to transfer the input to the position we need in our codes. Furthermore, computer vision can also be applied here. If you are interested in this part, please take a look at the vision part of Zhebang Hu.

• Have a further understanding of the degree of freedom(DOF)
• Get familiar with the Arduino board
• Be able to recognize the wiring  diagram and achieve several simple experiments
• Master the coding language we use in Arduino IDE and be able to distinguish the difference between it and C language.
• Know the basic language of secondary development and serial port communication.

As for the background here, the Specific introduction of xArm will give more information about the parameters and the structure of the armbot. Then the link of Begin with Arduino will tell you what is Arduino and what is Arduino. As for the kinematics part, if you are interested in the calculation of the coordinates, it will help you a lot.

• Begin with Arduino
• Forward & Inverse Kinematics

Serial Communication with Arduino 

Serial communication is a way of sending data. Here we use the ports in the Arduino board and our serco controller board to control our armbot with our own codes.

Wire Connection

•  Ground to Ground
• 5V to  5V
• RX to TX
• TX to RX

• Path planning with Arduino 
• Obstacle avoidance with Arduino