International Journal of Public Administration and Management Research (IJPAMR), Vol. 5, No.

2, August,
2019. Available online at http://www.rcmss.com/index.php/ijpamr; www.academix.ng
ISSN: 2350-2231(E) ISSN: 2346-7215 (P)
Shaibu Hamid-Ameh A.,Ogakwu P.A., Binfa Bongfa, & Ibrahim A. Audu, 2019, 5(2):73-82

DEVELOPMENT OF AN ARDUINO CONTROLLED ROBOTIC ARM

Shaibu Hamid-Ameh A1.,Ogakwu P.A2., Binfa Bongfa3, & Ibrahim A. Audu4

1,2,3&4
Department Of Mechanical Engineering, The Federal Polytechnic Idah ,
Kogi State, Nigeria

Editorial Comment: This article is published on the grounds of itspossible contribution

to technological development and policy administration
Abstract

This report contains the development of an Arduino controlled robotic arm having a five
Degree of Freedom (5-DoF). The robotic arm is intended for pick and place operation which is
to be used for instructional and educational purposes. In designing the robot arm, servomotors
were used to power the various joints of the robot arm. The research covers the procedure for
selection of the servos used to power each joint of the arm in details. Aluminum was selected to
fabricate the components of the robotic arm. The torque exerted at each of the joints was
calculated and a servo with the required torque rating was selected for each joint. The Arduino
UNO R3 board was selected for the project and the Arduino IDE software was used for the
control of the robotic arm. For controlling each movement of the joint we implemented the use
of Bluetooth module and an Android device. Satisfactory results were obtained from the project.
From the result, it was discovered that the Robot arm picked and placed an object with the
parameters: Mass = 60grams, Diameter = 60mm, Height = 80mm. The distance between the
initial position and the final position is 300mm.

Keywords: Development, Robotic Arm, Arduino, Degree of Freedom, Servomotors

Introduction

1.1 Robots
The study of Robots is a relatively young field of modern technology that crosses traditional
engineering boundaries. Understanding the complexity of robots and their applications requires
knowledge of electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, systems and industrial
engineering, computer science, economics, and mathematics. New disciplines of engineering,
such as manufacturing engineering, applications engineering, and knowledge engineering have
emerged to deal with the complexity of the field of robotics and factory automation. (Mark. W.
Spong, 2004).
Dominik Zunt (1998) opined that the term robot was first introduced into our vocabulary by
the Czech playwright Karel Capek in his 1920 play R.U.R (meaning Rossum’s Universal
Robots), the word “robota” being the Czech word for forced labor. Since then the term has
been applied to a great variety of mechanical devices, such as tele-operators, underwater
vehicles, autonomous land rovers, etc. Virtually anything that operates with some degree of
autonomy, usually under computer control, has at some point been called a robot. (Mark. W.
Spong, 2004).
From this humble conception, many authors began getting inspirations from the concept of
robot. Science-fiction author Isaac Asimov was the most famous of all the authors, he
composed a short story about robots in the 1940s. In the story, Asimov (1950) suggested three
principles to guide the behavior of robots and smart machines. Asimov’s Three Laws of
Robotics, as they are called include:

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1. A robot may not injure or harm a human being, or through inaction, allow a human
being to come
to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders
would conflict with the First law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict
with the First and Second laws. (Robotics Introduction, 2001)
As time passed, people began formulating an encompassing definition of a robot. The Robot
Institute of America (1979) defined a robot as a reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator
designed to move material, parts, tools or specialized devices through variable programmed
motions for the performance of a variety of tasks. As currently defined, robots exhibit three key
elements:
1. Programmability, implying computational or symbolic manipulative capabilities
that a designer can combine as desired (a robot is a computer)
2. Mechanical capability, enabling it to act on its environment rather than merely
function as a data processing or a computational device (a robot is a machine).
3. Flexibility in that it can operate using a range of programs and manipulates and
transport materials in a variety of ways. (Michael and SL Anderson, 2011)
Most robots used nowadays are designed for heavy, repetitive manufacturing work. They are
specifically designed to handle certain tasks that are difficult, dangerous, or too boring to
human beings. Robots can do more work more efficiently than humans can since robots are
precise. They always do the same task with such precision over and over no matter how long
they have worked. Robots nowadays are becoming more and more important in most industries
of the world. In manufacturing sector, Robot arm is so cardinal that it deserves attention.
A robot arm is a robotic manipulator, usually programmable, with similar functions to a human
arm. It has about same number of degree of freedom as in human arm. A typical robot arm is
made up of seven segments joined by six joints. Usually a servo motor is used in order to track
the movement of the robot arm. The reason for this is quite obvious since servo motors are
designed to move in exact increments unlike DC motors. With such configurations, a computer
may be able to control or maneuver the robot very precisely, repeating exactly the same
environment over and over again. (ROBOINDIA Roboindia.com)

1.2 MATERIALS AND METHODS

The electronic component required to power and program the robot arm are shown in table 1
below.
Components Specification Qty

Arduino Board UNO R3 1

Servomotor MG996r 5

SG90 1
Breadboard Generic 1
Jumper wire Generic 30
Bluetooth module HC-05 1
Battery 9v 6

Table 1. Electrical hardware requirement

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1.2.1 Arduino UNO R3 board

Arduino UNO R3 is a single-board microcontroller to make using electronics in
multidisciplinary projects more accessible. The hardware consists of a simple open source
hardware board designed around an 8-bit Atmel AVR microcontroller, or a 32-bit Atmel ARM.
The software consists of a standard programming language compiler and a boot loader that
executes on the microcontroller.

Figure 1. Arduino UNO R3 board (Source: Arduino.cc)

1.2.2: Servomotor
The Servo Motors includes three wires or leads in them. The positive supply and ground is
provided by first two cables. The third wire is for the control signal. The wires of a servo motor
are color coded. Ground wire is colored by black color. The DC supply is colored by red and
it has to be connected to a DC voltage supply in the range of 4.8 V to 6V. For the third cable,
all servo motors can have a different color. Generally it is in yellow color, same with the motors
which will be used in this project.

Figure 2. Servomotors
1.2.3 Breadboard
This will be used because, this makes it easy to use for creating prototypes and experimenting
with circuit design. It is reusable.

Figure 3. Breadboard (Source: Hub360.com.ng)

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1.2.4 Jumper wires

This will provide connection between components and it is necessary to build circuits on the
breadboard.

Figure 4. Jumper wires (Source: Hub360.com.ng)

1.2.5 External power source
This is used to give external power for the system. In some cases different voltage limits are
needed so ARDUINO cannot provide more than 5V and the current is so low. Therefore, this
part supplies the required voltage and the current.

Figure 5. Battery power source

1.2.6 HC-05 Bluetooth module
HC-05 module is an easy to use Bluetooth SPP (Serial Port Protocol) module, designed for
transparent wireless serial connection setup. Serial port Bluetooth module is fully qualified
Bluetooth V2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) 3Mbps Modulation with complete 2.4GHz radio
transceiver and baseband. It uses CSR Blue core 04.External single-chip Bluetooth system
with CMOS technology and with AFH (Adaptive Frequency Hopping Feature). It has the
footprint as small as 12.7mmx27mm.

Figure 6. HC-05 Bluetooth module

2.0 Methods
2.1 Fabrication of the robot arm
The components of the arm were cut from aluminum alloy sheet with the use of a nibbling
machine and the upright drilling machine. However, the aluminum alloy sheet used has a

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thickness of 1mm. The use of 1mm aluminum sheet was an added advantage since its lightness led
to a reduction in the load the servos had to bear. To further reduce the load imposed at the
shoulder joint, two servos were introduced at that joint.

The entire process of designing the robotic arm is represented by a flow diagram shown in
Fig. 7.
2.2 Design of the Robot arm
A CAD model of the robotic arm structure was designed and rendered using Autodesk’s
AutoCAD software. Fig. 8.
Table 2. Design specification of the Robot arm

Specification Value
Number of axes 5
Horizontal 230mm
reach
Vertical reach 130mm
Drives 6 Servomotors
Configuration 5 axes plus gripper
All axes completely independent
All axes can be controlled simultaneously
Work envelop (a) Base rotation – 180
(b) Shoulder Rotation -150 degrees
(c) Elbow Rotation -180 degrees
(d) Wrist Rotation -180 degrees
(e) Gripper Rotation -90 degrees

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START

Design the Robot Arm using Autodesk

Inventor Fusion

Kinematic analysis and torque calculation

of the robot arm

Construction and assembling of the robot arm

Constructing a suitable program for controlling the

robot arm and writing it to the Arduino board

Implementing the Bluetooth module to interface with

Arduino via an Android device

Troubleshooting N Test run

OK?

YES

Do analysis to the robot arm

END

Figure 7. Flowchart for the design of the robot arm

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Figure 8. CAD model of the robot arm

Figure 9. Labelling of the length of the links.

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Weight of each link and the weight of servos acting at each joint are summarized in Table 3.
Table 3. Parameters for the robot arm
Links Joints Weight of Weight of Ite
ms

L J link
W servo
A Ba
5 5 5 6 se
L J W A Shoulder
4 4 4 5
L J W A Elbow
3 3 3 4
L J W A Wri
2 2 2 3 st
L J W A Gripper
1 1 1 2
A Payload
1

Torque (T4) of the J4 motor (MG996R servo) we use the relation:

T4 = (L1 + L2 + L3 + L4 ) x A1 + ((0.5 x L1) + L2 + L3 + L4) x W1 + (L2 + L3 + L4)
x A2 + ((0.5 x L2) + L3 + L4) x W2 + (L3 + L4) x A3 + ((0.5 x L3) + L4) x W3 + (L4
x A4) + (L4 x 0.5) x W4

Torque (T3) of the J3 motor (MG996R servo):

T3 = (L1 + L2 + L3) x A1 + ((0.5 x L1) + L2 + L3) x W1 + (L2 + L3) x A2 + ((L2 x 0.5)
+L3) x
W2 + (L3 x A3) + (0.5 x L3) x W3
The torque (T2) of the J2 motor (MG996R servo) is
calculated:
T2 = (L1 + L2) x A1 + ((0.5 x L1) + L2) x W1 + (L2 x A2) + (0.5 x L2) x W2

In the same manner the torque (T1) of the J1 (SG90

servo): T1 = (L1 x A1) + (0.5 x L1) x W1
The lengths are: L1, L2, L3, L4 are 6.8 cm, 13.4 cm, 17cm 8 cm
respectively
The weight of the servos are: A2 = 9g, A3 = 56g, A4 = 56g,

Replacing the values of Ls and As in the above equations, assuming the weight of load is zero,
the torques of the motors were:
T1 = 0.021 kg.cm T2 = 0.6304 kg.cm T3 = 3.4554 kg.cm T4 = 11.8615 kg.cm
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The nominal torques of the servo motors as given by the manufacturer are: SG90 (T1) = 4.1
kg.cm
MG 996R (T2) = 9.6 kg.cm
MG996R (T3) = 9.6 kg.cm
MG996R (T4) = 19.2 kg.cm (two servos were provided at this joint)

From the above, it is seen that the arm is capable of lifting its own weight because the nominal
torques of the servos overlap the calculated torques with zero load (Wpayload = 0). If the load
Wpayload is set to be 25g the torques would be:
T1 = 0.3 kg.cm
T2 = 1.356 kg.cm T3 = 7.84 kg.cm T4 = 16.43 kg.cm
It is observed that if the load is WPayload = 25g, servos can cope. If the weight Wpayload is
increased to 60g, then the calculated torques would be:
T1 = 0.86 kg/cm T2 = 1.887 kg/cm T3 = 3.04 kg/cm T4 = 13.27 kg/cm

3.0 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The fabricated robotic arm components were assembled using the 3D model as a guide. The
servos were inserted at the various joints in such a way that centering all the servo horns
would make the arm to assume an upright pose. The centering of the servo horns was achieved
by connecting the servos to the Arduino UNO R3 controller and sending PWM (Pulse Width
Modulation) signals of 1500ms to them from the Arduino IDE software. The Arduino board was
connected to the PC running the Arduino IDE software via a USB cable which also supplied
enough current to power the Arduino UNO R3 controller board. The servos on the other hand
were powered using six numbers of 9v battery.

PLATE 1: The assembly of the robot arm

3.1 Programming and Control cases of the robot arm

After the robotic arm was assembled, each servo powering the arm was connected to the
Arduino UNO R3 controller. This was achieved by inserting the female outlet of each servo cable

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to the 3-header pins on the Arduino board. Servo extender cables were used to increase the
length of the wrist-rotate and gripper servos cables because they were far away from the Arduino
board. The control interface app was then deployed using and Android device via a Bluetooth
module. This app was created using the MIT App Inventor. It helps to control the robot arm
efficiently to pick an object from its initial position to the desired position.

3.1.1 Pick and Place operation No.1

During the pick and place task, the arm was controlled to pick an object weighing 30grams from
the initial position of the object to the measured.

3.1.2 Pick and Place operation No.2

The initial position and the measured position is the same as the Operation No.1, but the weight
of the object was varied to 40grams. And it was carried out as perfectly as done in Operation
No.1.

3.1.3 Pick and Place operation No.3

The third operation is almost the same as the operation No.1 and No.2, but more power was
consumed as the weight was above 60grams. The movement of the object from its initial position
to the desired position was achieved.

CONCLUSION
This research was to design and fabricate a robot arm having five degrees of freedom that can
be used for demonstrative and educational purposes and this has been achieved. The robot arm
is meant to perform a pick and place operation, this pick and place concept makes use of
servomotors which is controlled by the Arduino UNO R3 board. In order to control the
movement of the servomotors, an Android app to interface with the Arduino board via a
Bluetooth module was introduced.

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