6 International Journal of Energy and Power Engineering Research 1 (2013) 6-9 SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL WORK OF KINEMATIC PROBLEMS FOR KUKA KR 5 SIXX R650 ARTICULATED ROBOT Marizan Sulaiman 1 , M.I.K. Syaffiq 1 , Azmi Said 1 , H.N.M. Shah 1 and M.N. Fakhzan 2 1 Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Hang Tuah Jaya, 76100 Durian Tunggal, Melaka, Malaysia 2 School of Mechatronic Engineering, Rumah Universiti, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, Kampus Kubang Gajah,02600 Arau, Perlis Email: marizan@utem.edu.my ABSTRACT This paper studies an analytic solution for 6-DOF manipulator of a KUKA KR 5 SIXX R650 robotic arm using forward and inverse kinematics in a simple movement process. This paper proposes two points of movement in order to study three types of path motion used in the robotic arm. The three path motions are PTP (point- to-point), linear and circular. The motions are analyzed systemically using forward kinematics and inverse kinematics. The objective of forward kinematic analysis is to determine the cumulative effect of the entire set of joint variables. A simulation oriented analysis is obtained and comparison between simulation and experimental result is done. The result for both simulation and experimental works show close connection for the task. This robot is suitable to be applied to the teaching and training environment. Keywords: Kinematics, Manipulator, Trajectory, Robotic Arm 1. INTRODUCTION Nowadays, robotic arms are used in various applications and environment. Each of them has their own complexity and uniqueness in order to fulfill the task given. However, many advance technologies are severely restricted in commercial system due to limitation of the controller rather than the manipulator arms (Kay, 2005). In order to overcome this limitation there were several systems been develop for example vision based system (Haniff et al. 2011). A robotic manipulator is designed to perform a task in the 3-D space. The tool or end-effector is to follow a planned trajectory to manipulate objects or carry out the task in the workspace. This requires control of position of each link and joint of the manipulator to control both the position and orientation of the tool (Lombai et al. 2008). In order to understand how to control the position of each link and joint of the manipulator, it is important to analyze the kinematic solution of the robot. There are two kinematic topics discuss in this paper that is forward and inverse kinematic. Forward kinematic is about finding position of any coordinates by referring to the given length of each link and angle of each joint while inverse kinematic is about finding angles of each joint needed to obtain the position based on given length of each link and the position (Xu D. et al. 2005). In this paper the focus will be on the forward kinematics and inverse kinematics problem of a KUKA KR 5 SIXX R650 robotic arm. KUKA Robotics is a well-known Germany manufacturer of industrial robots for various industrial processes. The robotic arm comes with a teaching pendant that has a display and an integrated mouse where manipulator is move or positions are create, edit and save. The latest teaching pendant uses the Windows XP operating system. The KR 5 SIXX R650 is a 6-axes robotic arm weighting 28kg with the payload up to 5kg (KUKA). This paper will focus specifically on the use of this type of robotic arm in a simple two point’s movement process. 2. METHODOLOGY 2.1 Kinematic Theory and Analysis In order to analyze the kinematic of arm robot, it is important to identify the coordinate frames. The z i axis for all joints will follow the direction of rotation and the right- handed rule is use to identify the rotation (Diaz et al. 2010). Referring to Figure 1, at joint 1, z 0 is representing the first joint going upwards as it is a revolute joint. Then the direction of x 0 is chosen to be parallel with the reference frame of x-axis. Next z 1 is assigned at joint 2 and since z 0 and z 1 are intersecting, x 1 will be assigned as common normal. At joint 3, z 2 will have same direction as z 1 and x 2 will be common normal between z 1 and z 2 . Direction of z 3