Design and Fabrication of Pick and Place Robotic Arm Controlled by Android Device

This work is designed to develop a pick and place robotic arm with a soft catching gripper, which is meant to be constructed on hardware and software. A robotic arm is a type of mechanical arm, usually programmable, with similar functions to human arm. This proposed project is to build a robotic arm that is capable to pick an object with the help of an wireless device (Android device). Since the system that will be built will be divided into two circuits. Micro controller circuit and Driver Circuit. This system will be powered by 12v Battery. To create a systematic, faster and efficient operation, micro controller is used.

At the transmitting end using android application device, commands are sent to the receiver to control the movement of the robot either to move forward, backward and left or right etc. At the receiving end four motors are interfaced to the microcontroller where two of them are used for arm and gripper movement of the robot while the other two are for the body movement. The android application device transmitter acts as a remote control that has the advantage of adequate range, while the receiver end Bluetooth device is fed to the microcontroller to drive DC motors via motor driver IC for necessary work. Remote operation is achieved by any smart-phone/Tablet etc., with Android OS; upon a GUI (Graphical User Interface) based touch screen operation. The main advantage of this robot is its soft catching arm that is designed to avoid extra pressure on the suspected object for safety reasons.

Further the work can be enhanced by interfacing it with a wireless camera so that the person controlling it can view operation of the arm and gripper remotely.