Abstract:
In the last few decades, humanoid robots have drawn attention due to their versatile applications in a variety of fields such as industrial, medical, space, military, marine, and household applications. For a human, moving an object from one location to another requires a seamless communication between brain and both arm and hand. Designing a robotic arm that performs such a task presents many challenges from the mechanical and the electrical point of view. The human arm has multiple degrees of freedom that can be used simultaneously. Additionally, the human hand can grasp both delicate and hard objects. The human brain can manipulate both arms and hands independently and do so quickly and accurately. The goal of this paper is to present a design and a control methodology of an articulated robotic arm and hand that can mimic its human counterpart. The proposed system is a 6-Degree-Of-Freedom (DOF) hand gesture controlled robotic arm having an end-effector to lift light loads and place them in the desired locations. A haptic feedback that gives the human operator a feeling of the amount of force applied by the end gripper is also provided for the designed robotic arm. A complete wired and wireless platform is provided with a comprehensive comparison.