Design and Fabrication of a Programmable Autonomous Robotic Arm

SAJID GHUFFAR, JAVAID IQBAL, USMAN MEHMOOD and MUHAMMAD ZUBAIR
Department of Mechatronics
College of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering,
National University of Sciences and Technology,
Peshawar Road, Rawalpindi,
PAKISTAN.
[e-mail] , [e-mail], [e-mail] , [e-mail]
Abstract – The ultimate aim of the industrial robotics is to make machines that can perform complex tasks like welding, machining, assembling while sufficiently reducing the time and cost needed to accomplish sophisticated jobs. This paper presents a prototype model of an industrial robotic arm and discusses various aspects of the components involved in the system. Emphasis is placed on the user interface of the system which comprises of two generic components as found in most industrial robot systems present today, first is the teach-pendant and second one is the computer based robot programming language. The robot programming language incorporates robot control functions along with the fundamental elements of a high level language and has a very simple and concise syntax. The aspiration of this work is to present a system which is powerful, cost effective and at the same time intelligible to an average user.
Key-Words: - robotic arm, robot programming language, teach pendant, user interface, AVR microcontroller, robot kinematics
1 Introduction
Since the dawn of industrial robotics, robot software architectures and programming languages have been a topic of great interest [1]. It is imperative that a user friendly interface is built for an industrial robot system in order to gain universal recognition. Hence a lot of work had been done to develop user friendly interfaces that will at the same time provide powerful programming environment [2]. Our research focuses on developing such an interface, which is easy to use without compromising on the control that has been given to the user.
Biggs and MacDonald in [3] have divided the robot programming

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