Kinematic Modelling and Maneuvering of A 5-Axes Articulated Robot Arm T.C. Manjunath Abstract—This paper features the kinematic modelling of a 5-axis stationary articulated robot arm which is used for doing successful robotic manipulation task in its workspace. To start with, a 5-axes articulated robot was designed entirely from scratch and from indigenous components and a brief kinematic modelling was performed and using this kinematic model, the pick and place task was performed successfully in the work space of the robot. A user friendly GUI was developed in C++ language which was used to perform the successful robotic manipulation task using the developed mathematical kinematic model. This developed kinematic model also incorporates the obstacle avoiding algorithms also during the pick and place operation. Keywords—Robot, Sensors, Kinematics, Computer, Control, PNP, LCD, Software. I. INTRODUCTION MAGINE a day in your life when you wake up in the morning and find a machine walking up to you and saying “GOOD MORNING SIR ! Have a cup of tea”. How would you respond to such a situation ? With so much progress made in the field of science, engineering and technology, this dream is absolutely realizable in the automation age with the advent of robotization. Robotics, thus became an interdisciplinary field which mixed various engineering disciplines into one. Keeping in pace with the current technology, we have designed and fabricated a stationary 5-axes articulated robot as shown in the Fig. 1. This fabricated unit is used to perform a brief kinematic analysis and further used to perform a PNP task without human intervention using sensors[12]. In this paper, a unique 5 axes articulated system was also simulated in MATLAB using the available toolboxes and a user friendly GUI in C++ is developed for doing the pick and place task on the computer screen. Once, it is successful in the simulation stage, then the same PNP task is transformed into the reality stage using the designed robot to verify the simulated results [13]. The paper is organized as follows. In section 2, a brief introduction about the designed and fabricated robotic manipulator is given. Sections 3 and 4 discusses about the direct kinematic modelling along with the mathematical treatment along with the development of the link coordinate diagram and the kinematic parameters. Finally, the conclusions are presented in the last section followed by the references. II. DESIGNED & FABRICATED SYSTEM The simulated robot is a 5 DOF stationary articulated robot arm having base, shoulder, elbow, tool pitch and tool roll and consisting of only rotary joints [1]. The robot design consisted of three parts, viz., mathematical modelling, mechanical design, electronic design and the software design [14]. There are 5 joints, 5 axis (3 major axes - base, shoulder elbow : to position the wrist and 2 minor axis - pitch and roll : to orient the gripper in the direction of the object). Since n = 5 ; 20 kinematic parameters are to be obtained and 6 unit frames are to be attached to the various joints [2] as shown in the link coordinate diagram in Fig. 2. Fig. 1 Indigenously developed 5-axes articulated robot. The vector of joint variables is given by [1] q = {θ 1 , θ 2 , θ 3 , θ 4 , θ 5 } T . The vector of joint distances are given by [1] d = {d 1 , d 2 , d 3 , d 4 , d 5 } T = {25, 0, 0, 0, 15} T cm . The vector of link lengths are given by [1] a = {a 1 , a 2 , a 3 , a 4 , a 5 } T = {0, 23, 22, 8, 0} T mm. The vector of link twist angles are given by [1] α = {α 1 , α 2 , α 3 , α 4 , α 5 } T = {−90°, 0, 0, 90°, 0} T . L 0 to L 5 : Six unit frames. d 5 : Tool length q 1 to q 5 : Joint variables ( q = θ ) p : Tool-tip d 1 : Height of shoulder from base 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 : Rotary joints a 2 a 3 , a 4 : Link lengths I World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology International Journal of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering Vol:1, No:4, 2007 195 International Scholarly and Scientific Research & Innovation 1(4) 2007 scholar.waset.org/1307-6892/6544 International Science Index, Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering Vol:1, No:4, 2007 waset.org/Publication/6544