Projects:2014S1-47 Robotic Arm for Trash Collecting Robot

This project will be working on an autonomous trash collecting robot. The focus of the group for this project will be on the artificial intelligence and sensing aspects of the problem. A robotic platform already exists but the system will need a robotic arm to pick up and items and place them in a bin. Commercial arms are available, but a quick survey of what's available reveals that they are too small, not strong enough or too expensive. The objective of this project is to either develop a custom arm for the purpose or to find a commercial off-the-shelf arm and adapt it for the purpose, then to develop an interface for the trash collecting robot to be agreed with the other group. The arm may be used for other purposes including, for example, playing games or providing demonstrations at University Open Days and exhibitions and a secondary objective is to develop an engaging demonstration of its capabilities.

Introduction

This project will be on the artificial intelligence and sensing aspects of the problem. A robotic platform already exists but the system will need a robotic arm to pick up and items and place them in a bin. Commercial arms are available, but a quick survey of what's available reveals that they are too small, not strong enough or too expensive. The objective of this project is to either develop a custom arm for the purpose or to find a commercial off-the-shelf arm and adapt it for the purpose, then to develop an interface for the trash collecting robot to be agreed with the other group. The arm may be used for other purposes including, for example, playing games or providing demonstrations at University Open Days and exhibitions and a secondary objective is to develop an engaging demonstration of its capabilities.

Project Information

Robot as one of common topic that been talk inside every university. Meanwhile, an autonomous trash collecting robot matches the needs for university campus nowadays and future. It is critical for university involving this advance area as part of educational purpose, because robot technologies have been used in industry, military, and essentially is the direction of future technologies.

The trash collecting robot is expected to perform pick up trash and put it back to bin actions, and meanwhile the robot can move around inside university, detect objects to avoid collision with human and other barriers, also able to identify objects such as cans, bottles, apply the actions to achieve the function of trash collecting. Trash collecting robot project has been divided into 3 parts, as artificial intelligence agent development for the robot which considered as the “brain” of robot, and a platform which has a suitable size and functions to carry a bin and able to perform expected movements as the “body” of robot, for our group particularly we focus on the arm of this robot. There are a few of commercial arms are available, by study and understand the functions and capabilities of these arms, we will choose one of them and develop this arm to achieve the purpose of this project.

Project Plan

The project is developed base on the work of a team; the team includes two students, and two supervisors. A plan and life cycle of the project is established in the first two weeks. Additionally, every week, there is a meeting between students and supervisors; the content of the meeting is to report the progress of the project and future decision discussions. Individual tasking applied to the group members, include searching, individual planning, and documentations.

Project Progress

The requirement for the robotic arm:

 Length approximately 50cm (Consider the size of a can and bin)  A rotatable base that can be installed on any platform  Arm and gripper should at least 4 degree of freedom  Each joints and base element need to provides feedbacks  Two finger gripper and sensor engineered The concept of this arm allows the robotic arm to reach a point on the ground.

The robotic arm using the Dynamixel AX-12A servo, the servo has its compact size, it is a smart, modular actuator that incorporates a gear reducer, a precision DC motor , and a control circuitry with networking functions. It is made from high quality materials, can provides necessary strength and structural resistance to withstand large external forces.

The table below summarized main specifications of AX-12 servo:

Additionally, AX-12 servo able to provide feedback including, position, Temperature, Load, input Voltage, etc.

The controller used for the project is CM-700 which is a control module type controller with a CPU:

The controller require an external power supply from the user, when connecting the CM-700 and the SUB board the working voltage is between 7 and 35 volts. When controller connected to AX-12 servo, the voltage range will be 9V ~ 12V. The Li-Po conversion using 3 cells, meanwhile, the Ni-MH conversion using 8~10 cells. We will program the CM-700 using PC, to be this the connection between PC and controller require a LN-101 USB downloader, as shown below:

Milestones

Milestone 1: Proposal Seminar (20th March 2014) Select Proposal Seminar as first milestone is because this is the first turning point for our project, which particularly means we switching Plan A build a robotic arm by ourselves to Plan B purchase one existing robotic arm.

Milestone 2: Final Decision of selecting arm for project (5th May 2014). The executed plan states that we extend our researching duration for find an arm to two weeks. At the beginning of the may we came out with a result of the selected arm, which is Cruscrawler AX12 Smart Robotic Arm.

Milestone 3: Placing the order for the AX12 Robotic Arm (7th May 2014) For ordering our selection of the robotic arm means our project tend to next stage

Milestone 4: Assemble robotic arm (27th May 2014) To finish assemble of the robotic arm, imply that project progress result match our executed plan, which means for the next semester or the time between two semesters we can start to program the arm, and interact with aims of the project.

Team Members

• Mr Junyu GUO
• Mr Salih Al Rashid

Supervisors

• Dr Braden Phillips
• Prof Michael Liebelt

Resources

Bench #7 Project Lab

“AX-12+ Smart Robotic Arm”, http://www.crustcrawler.com/products/AX18F%20Smart%20Robotic%20Arm/docs/Robot%20Smart%20Robotic%20Arm%20Review.pdf Last Accessed: 04/04/2014

“Robobench: Putting the CrustCrawler AX-12 Smart Arm to Work” http://www.crustcrawler.com/products/AX18F%20Smart%20Robotic%20Arm/docs/RoboBench_1.pdf Last Accessed: 14/04/2014

Royer,“A versatile, robust platform with intelligent feedback and precise control” http://www.crustcrawler.com/products/AX18F%20Smart%20Robotic%20Arm/docs/August2011AX12%20.pdf Last Accessed: 2/05/2014

“Robotis e-Manual-Ax-12A Servo” http://support.robotis.com/en/product/dynamixel/ax_series/dxl_ax_actuator.htm Last Accessed: 24/05/2014