A low-cost robot manipulator for education

Over the past few years, the teaching of industrial robotics associated with hands on practice has become an indispensable methodology for the subject. However, a majority of the robots applicable for the undergraduate or graduate levels are very expensive or have a closed hardware and software architecture. This restricts content exploration by the students in order to understand the matters related to robotics. In this article, an educational experience related to robotic education is described. It involves the design and development of an robot manipulator with four degrees of freedom. In addition, the activities in which the students participated during the execution of this work are presented. The robot developed could be an ideal platform for the research and teaching of robotics.