In today’s modern world the development in robotic technology has played an important role in many fields. In the manufacturing field, robot development has focused on engineering robotic arms that perform manufacturing processes. In space technology, the robotic arm with rover has automated space exploration and research. If we consider the military field the robotic arm has relieved the technicians of danger when it comes to deactivation of bombs.

This project is to design and construct Robotic arm with Rover, capable of being programmed from an external device run by a microcontroller. The entire operation is being manually controlled to obtain the desired results.

1. The robotic arm was designed to resemble the human arm that is able to grip, pick and place various objects.
2. The arm is a 5 axis robotic manipulator consisting of a rotating base, three links and a gripper. The five axes consist of the following:
· Shoulder, elbow, wrist (vertical movement)
· An axis at the base (horizontal movement)
· Finger (gripping movement)
3. The whole robotic arm along with the rotating base is placed on a rover which exhibits forward, backward, left and right movements.

We have been successful in designing the mechanical structure of the robotic arm along with the rover and it is operating as planned.

SYSTEM DESCRIPTION

Project is to design and construct Robotic arm with Rover, capable of being programmed from an external device then run by its own controller ,and can be manually controllable.
The main component in terms of visibility and end result is the mechanical and servo motor . The arm itself has five degrees of freedom and has gripper and the rover has two geared DC motors. And the rover has Forward, Reverse, Left and right movements.

Robotic Arm

The arm has five degrees of freedom and five servo motors, one for each joint except for the farthest vertical joint from the gripper, known as the “shoulder”(shoulder has 2 servo motors).

Degrees of Freedom (DOF)

The degrees of freedom, or DOF, is a very important term to understand. Each degree of freedom is a joint on the arm, a place where it can bend or rotate or translate. We can identify the number of degrees of freedom by the number of actuators on the robot arm. Now this is very important - when building a robot arm. Because each degree requires a motor, and exponentially complicated algorithms and cost

Description of Arm

The shoulder joint requires reinforcement by two servo motors in order to increase the torque driven through the joint, to counteract the weight of objects in the gripper. The other three motors each drive their own joint. There is a, a vertical shoulder joint (driven by two coupled motors), a vertical elbow joint, a vertical wrist joint, and a motor that drives the opening and closing of the two-fingered gripper. In total, it has a total of five degrees of freedom. rotational base joint is driven by geared dc motor.

Robot Workspace

The robot workspace (sometimes known as reachable space) is all places that the end effectors (gripper) can reach. The workspace is dependent on the DOF limitations, the arm link lengths, the angle at which something must be picked up at, etc. The workspace is highly dependent on the robot configuration.

DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION AND ASSEMBLY OF THE ROBOTIC ARM:

The robotic arm was designed to resemble the human arm that is able to grip, pick and place various objects. The design of robotic arm involves few major components which include the rotating base, shoulder, elbow, wrist and gripper The arm is the main structure consisting of a mechanical structure, servomotors, and power supply. The arm is a 5 axis robotic manipulator consisting of a rotating base, three links and a gripper.
The five axes consist of the following:
• Shoulder, elbow, wrist (vertical movement)
• An axis at the base (horizontal movement)
• Finger (gripping movement)
The main considerations taken during the design process was to design a robotic arm that assembles the human arm, able to stand alone, size should be similar and not too bulky,light and the overall cost should be low.

The design of the rotating base:

It consists of metal plates attached to the left and right side. The is hollow to reduce material usage and the overall weight. The base of the robotic base is attached on a geared dc motor to provide base rotation with the help of wooden wheel . This is needed to support the entire weight of the robotic arm and objects that is gripped with the gripper. The servo motors used for movements of the arm are able to rotate to a maximum 180 degrees.

The design of the shoulder:

The design of the shoulder fully assembles the human arm. The metal plates used to connect the left side and right side is designed to have smaller dimension that does to cover the entire length of the sides. The movement of the shoulder is supported by two large-scale servo motor working together simultaneously. These motors are also able to move 180 degrees.

The design of the elbow:

As for the elbow, it is only supported by a single servo motor as the weight it need to support is much reduced. It only needs to support the wrist and the gripper and it is mounted to one side of the elbow assembly. The other side is supported by a smooth spring attached to the shoulder Spring Contact it does not cause much friction and unwanted noise that might appear when two parts collide with each other.

The design of the wrist and the gripper:

The wrist is made up of standard servo motors which One more servo is attached side by side are to move the wrist by 90 degrees and the servo attached at the top is to control the movement of the gripper. The wrist was designed as light as possible as it is supported by standard servos.