An autonomous image-guided robotic system simulating industrial applications

This paper presents a robotic system based on a serial manipulator. The robot is a vertical articulated arm with 5 revolute joints having 6 Degree Of Freedom. Actuated with six precise servo motors, the system offers positional accuracy of ±0.5mm with a movement speed of 100mm/s. Forward and Inverse Kinematic model of the robot has been developed and its workspace has been analyzed to facilitate the use of robotic arm as a simulated industrial manipulator. Image processing has been done to make system more autonomous. Followed by a user´s commands, the system acquires image of the environment using on-board camera. This image is processed to extract information about object´s coordinates. Based on these coordinates, Inverse Kinematic model computes the required joint angles for the end-effector to reach at desired position and orientation thus enabling it to manipulate the object. The proposed system can be used in wide range of industrial applications involving pick and place, sorting and other object manipulation tasks. The system can also be potentially useful for heavy and `giant´ industrial applications after scaling up i.e. using huge robotic arm, employing multiple and better cameras and optimizing algorithms.