See

discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311440291

Design and development of robotic arm for

cutting trees
Technical Report December 2016
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.27300.27528

CITATIONS

READS

5 authors, including:
Abedallatif Baba
Trk Hava Kurumu niversitesi
24 PUBLICATIONS 13 CITATIONS
SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:
Genetic algorithm-based technique for predicting future generations of hazelnuts chromosomes.
View project
Artificial Intelligence in Nanotechnology View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Abedallatif Baba on 06 December 2016.
The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. All in-text references underlined in blue are added to the original document
and are linked to publications on ResearchGate, letting you access and read them immediately.

Design and development of robotic arm for cutting trees

University of Turkish Aeronautical Association
Faculty of Engineering
Aimn Mohamed Ahmed GHIET, Mukhtar Abdussalam DAKHIL, Almehdi Khalifa DAYAB,
Alauldin ali SAEID and Abdellatif BABA

Abstract
The Robot Institute of America defines a robot as a programmable multifunctional
manipulator designed to move material, parts, and tools of the specialized device through
variable programmed of a variety of tasks. Today, in this modern fast growing industrial age,
every company is looking for speed in manufacturing to meet the needs and requirements of
its clients. Robots are more quickly, cheaply, and accurately than humans have ever been.
One type of robot mostly used in industry is a robotic manipulator or simply robotic arm. It is
open or closed kinematic chain of rigid links interconnected by movable joints. In some
configurations, links can be considered to correspond to human anatomy as waist, upper arm
and forearm with joint at shoulder end elbow. A machine was designed and fabricated which
can move around the tree trunk smoothly while carrying the cutting system. A mechanize
motor system also was designed and assembled on the carrier machine for moving the cutting
machine forward and backward along the tree trunk radius. For a successful and smooth
cutting process, two direct current (DC) motors were used for carrier machine. The cutting
machine consists of a mechanism for cutting and a cutting blade. A reciprocating mechanism
was used in this project because of the added advantages of this method as compared to
others. The design of the blade tooth for doing a fast and clean cut was an important
parameter in this project. An ATmega2560 microcontroller was used to control the cutting
system.
Keywords: Robot Arm, Design, Development, Implementation, DC Motors, Manufacturing,
Microcontroller, End-Effector, Robot Gripper, Cutting Tree

Page |2

1. Introduction
Robotics involves elements of mechanical,
electrical and software engineering, as
well as control theory, computing and now
artificial intelligence (Selig, 1992).
Robotics research today is based on
developing
systems
that
exhibit
modularity, flexibility, fault-tolerance, a
general
and
extensible
software
environment and seamless connectivity to
other machines, by providing sensor-based
intelligence to the mechanical arm. The
goal of agricultural robots does not only
apply to robotics technologies in the field
of agriculture, it also applies to using
agricultural challenges to develop new
techniques and systems. An agricultural
robot must deal with an unstructured,
unknown and varying environment.
In recent years, harvester robots have been
among the noteworthy topics studied by
researchers. First, as the modern industry
has become more complex, there has been
a growing need for getting work done in
environments that are very dangerous for
humans. As an example, work in a nuclear

Noise, Poisonous gasses, the risk of injury

by machines. Simple robots do many
routine jobs in industry. Robots are useful
in sample assembly operations such as
stuffing printed circuit boards and loading
and unloading parts from machines. Due to
increased using of industrial robot arms, an
evolution to the topic began trying to
imitate human movements in a detail
mode. For example, a group of students in
Korea made a design of innovations that
robotic arm take account of dancing hand,
weight lifting, Chinese calligraphy writing
and color classification. Another group of
engineers at the USA develops eight
degrees of freedom robot arm. This robot
is able to grasp many objects with a lot of
shapes from a pen to a ball and simulating
also the hand of a human being. In space,
the Space Shuttle Remote Manipulator
System, known as SSRMS, and its
successor is an example of multi-degree of
freedom robot arms that have been used to
perform a variety of tasks such as
inspections of the space shuttle using a
specially deployed boom with cameras and

Figure 1. Components of Mechanical Arm

reactor plant often requires contact with

radioactive materials. Second, as robots
became more advanced and less expensive,
they are being set up in industry situations
where working conditions are not so much
dangerous as unpleasant for various
reasons. These situations typically involve
high degrees of the following: - Heat,

sensors attached to the end effector.

2. Components of Mechanical Arm
The structure of a
illustrated in figure 1,
mechanical and can be
chain. The chain is

mechanical arm
is usually mostly
called a kinematic
formed of links,

Page |3

actuators, and joints which can allow one

or more degrees of freedom. The most
contemporary mechanical arm uses open
serial chains in which each link connect the
one before to the one after it. These
mechanical arms often resemble the human
arm. The mechanical arm used us
manipulators have an end effector mounted
on the last link. This end effector can be
anything from a welding device to a
mechanical hand used to manipulate the
environment.

Figure 2. A DC Motor

A DC motors (Figure 2) is any of a class

of electrical machines that converts direct
current electrical power into mechanical
power. Nowadays, DC motors play a vital
role in most of the industrial areas, it can
be seen in most of the electronic devices.
They are mainly used for the mechanical
movements of physical applications such
as rolling the bundle of sheets or CD
drivers, lifts etc. Many methods evolved to
control the revolution of a motor. DC
motors can be controlled either by software
or directly by hardware. Software
controlling needs computers which are
bulky and common man cannot afford it,
so hardware controls are in use. Even in
hardware if it is programmable device then
it is preferred because it can be modeled
according to the requirements of the user.
Advantages of using PIC over other
controlling devices for controlling the DC
motor are given below:

1. SPEED: The execution of an instruction

in PIC IC is very fast (in a microsecond).
One instruction generally takes 0.2
microseconds.
1. COMPACT: The PIC IC will make
the hardware circuitry compact.
2. RI
SC
PROCESOR:
The
instruction set consists only of 35
instructions.
3. EPROM PROGRAM MEMORY:
Program can be modified and
rewritten very easily.
4. INBUILT
HARDWARE
SUPPORT: Since PIC IC has
inbuilt programmable timers, ports,
and interrupts, no extra hardware is
needed.
5. POWERFUL
OUTPUT
PIN
CONTROL: Output pins can be
driven to a high state, using a single
instruction. The output pin can
drive a load up to 25mA.
Vision Computer vision is the science
and technology of machines that see. As a
scientific discipline, computer vision is
concerned with the theory behind artificial
systems that extract information from
images.
The image data can take many forms, such
as video sequences and the view from
cameras. In most practical computer vision
applications,
the
computers
are
reprogrammed to solve a particular task,
but methods based on learning are now
becoming increasingly common. Computer
vision system relies on the image sensor
which detects electromagnetic radiation
which is typically in the form of either
visible light or infra-red light. The sensors
are designed using solid-state physics. The
process by which light propagates and
reflects off the surface is explained using
optics. Sophisticated image sensor even
requires quantum mechanics to provide a
complete understanding of the image
formation process.

Page |4

Figure 5. Human and Robot Grippers

Figure 3. Components of Vision Senors Diagram

Manipulation Mechanical arm which

must work in the real world require some
way to manipulate objects; pick up,
modify, destroy, or otherwise have an
effect. Thus the hands of a mechanical
arm are often referred to as end effector,
while the arm is referred to as a
manipulator.
Mechanical Grippers One of the most
common effectors is the gripper. In its
simplest manifestation, it consists of just
two fingers which can open and close to
pick up and let go of a range of small
objects.

Figure 4. Robot Gripper

3. Cutting Machine
Two essential parameters for designing a
cutting machine for any material are the
cutting mechanism and the cutter blade
design. Common types of cutting machines
include reciprocating saws, horizontal
endless band saws, universal tilt frame
band saws, abrasive saws, and cold saw.
Rotary saw cutting is a cutting method
which is versatile and effective for a
variety of industrial applications. The
advantages of using the rotary saw method
are faster cutting times, closer tolerances,
better finishes, less kerf, easier tool
changes, better tool life, and an overall
wider range of applicability.
The
reciprocating saw mimics the back and
forth motion of a common hacksaw. The
gearing system inside the reciprocating
saw will cause the saw blade move back
and forth across the material that needs to
be cut. This saw is usually used to cut
wood, plaster, plastic or some other soft
material. The important parameters to be
considered when choosing a blade for
cutting are the type of metal, width, blade
set, thickness, tooth form and length of the
blade. Most saws are designed to create a
kerf that is wider than the saw blade. This
difference is called the side clearance
which is the most important parameter for
doing a curve cut. The teeth of the blade
used in this project were bent alternately in
opposite directions to create a kerf wider

Page |5

than the body. The amount of bending is

usually proportionate to the thickness of
the body. The amount of bending is usually
proportionate to the thickness of the blade
body and is usually 25% of the blade
thickness. The angle at which the points of
the saw tooth make contact with the
material is an important factor of the
effective cutting performance of a saw
blade. Figure 6 shows the design of the
alternate tooth style and teeth angles of the
blade used in this project for cutting the
trees. The radial lengths of the circles that
can be cut by a blade depend on the ratio
of the width of the blade to the width of the
saw kerf. Since the diameter of the trunk
tree is not constant, the blade was designed
based on the minimum size of the three
which is 32 cm. The appropriate size of the
blade width is calculated using:

shows the Free Body Diagram for

mechanical design of the robotic arm. As
shown, the end effector is not included in
the design because a commercially
available gripper is used. This is because
that the end effector is one of the most
complex parts of the system and, in turn, it
is much easier and economical to use a
commercial one than build it. The DC
motor was installed in such position so that
the teeth of its sprocket were placed inside
the chain. The rotation of the DC motor
causes the sheet metal to move forward
and backward. One limit switch was
installed at the head of the cutting
machine. When the cutting machine moves
forward, the limit switch touches the tree
surface and stops the motor.

W2/2 = (R+K)2 (R+T)2 , where

W is the blade width,
R is the radius of the tree trunk,
K is the size of the kerf width, and
T is the thickness of the blade.

Figure 7. Free Body Diagram of the Robot Arm

Figure 6. The alternate set of style and its angles

4. Mechanical Design
The mechanical design of the robot arm is
based on a robot manipulator with similar
function to a human arm. The links of such
a manipulator are connected by joints
allowing rotational motion and the links of
the manipulator is considered to form a
kinematic chain. The business end of the
effector or end-of-arm-tooling and its
analogous to the human hand. Figure 7

Controlling of the DC motors is done by

the operator using the remote controller.
Figure 8 shows the work region of the
robotic arm. This is the typical workspace
of a robot arm with four degrees of
freedom (4 DOF). The mechanical design
was limited to 4 DOF mainly because that
such a design allows most of the necessary
movements and keeps the costs and the
complexity of the robot competitively.
In choosing the materials and the shape for
the fabrication of the robotic arm, the
following were taken into consideration:

The ease of manufacturing the

parts

Page |6

The mode of manufacturing

Ease of assembly
Strength and durability of the parts
Weight of robot
Cost

The principal requirements for power

transmission of robots are:

Low weight and moment of inertia

High effective stiffness
Accurate and constant transmission
ratio
Low energy losses and friction for
better responsiveness of the control
system
Elimination of backlash
Small size

Hence, the combination of these factors

has influenced all the choices made in the
design selection of the robotic arm.

The values used for the torque

calculations:
Wd = 0.011 kg (weight of link DE)
Wc = 0.030 kg (weight of link CD)
Wb = 0.030 kg (weight of link CB)
L = 1 kg (load)
Cm = Dm = 0.050 kg (weight of motor)
LBC = 0.14 m (length of link BC)
LCD = 0.14 m (length of link CD)
LDE = 0.05 m (length of link DE)

Figure 9. Force Diagram of the Robotic Arm

Performing the sum of forced in te Y axis,

using the loads as shown in Figure 10, and
solving for CY and CB, see Equations (1)(4). Similarly, performing the sum of
moments around point C, Equation (5), and
point B, Equation (6), to obtain the torque
in C and B, Equations (7) and (8),
resectively.

Figure 8. Work Region of the Robotic Arm

Figure 9 shows the force diagram used for

load calculations. The calculations were
carried out only for the joints that have the
largest loads since the other joints would
have the same motor. The calculations
considered the weight of the motors, about
50 grams, except for the weight of motor at
joint B, since it is carried out by link BA.
Figure 10 shows the force diagram on link
CB, which contains the joint (B and C)
with the highest load (carry the links DC
and ED) and the calculations are carried
out as follows.

Figure 10. Force Diagram of Link CB

Fy =(L + Wd + Dm + Wc + Cm)g CY = 0 (1)

CY = (1.141 kg) 9.8 m/s2 = 11.18 N
(2)
Fy =(L + Wd + Dm + Wc + Cm + WB)g CB = 0

(3)
CB = (1.171 kg ) 9.8 m/s2 = 1.4758 N
(4)
MC = - (Wc LCD / 2) WD (LCD + LDE/ 2) -L
(LCD + LDE) Dm(LCD) + MC = 0
(5)

Page |7
MB= - L(LBC + LCD + LDE) WD(LBC+LCD+LDE/2) - Dm (LBC+LCD) Wc
(LBC+LCD/2) - Cm (LBC) WB (LBC/2) + MB = 0
(6)
Mc = 1.968 Nm = 278.6 oz/in
(7)
MB = 3.554 Nm = 503.38 oz/in
(8)

5. Remote Controller
A remote controller system comprises of
hardware and software designed and
fabricated for the operator to control the
cutting system. The remote controller and
the cutting system each have one HM-RF
transmitter-receiver
device
and
an
Atmega2560 microcontroller as the main
hardware components. A specific program
was written for each microcontroller to
receive the data, analyze them and finally
generate and send the appropriate
commands to other components, such as
DC motors and HM-RF devices.
An HM-TR Transparent Wireless Data
Link Module consists of two parts, both of
which can send and receive data
wirelessly. The first part is used by the
remote controller to send the operators
commands and the second part is installed
on the cutting system to receive the
commands from the remote controller. The
data transferred between these parts uses a
radio frequency that ranges between
310.24 and 929.27 MHz. This paper
focuses more on the processes needed to
transfer the data from the HM-TR Module
to the microcontroller, and the analysis of
them.

SOFTWARE
When the operator pushes a button on the
remote controller, the remote controller
sends three numerical codes to the receiver
of the robot. The first number informs the
microcontroller that a new command is
being sent by the remote controller and it
readies the microcontroller to receive the
next two numbers. The second number is
the code of the command that is allocated
to a button of the remote controller. By
analyzing this number, the microcontroller
understands what the operator wants the
robot to do. The third number is a
summation of the first and the second
numbers and is called the checksum
number. The microcontroller also adds up
the first and the second received numbers
and compares the result with the
checksum. If these numbers are the same,
the microcontroller understands that it has
received the data from the remote
controller completely and correctly.
In the next program, the microcontroller
sends the appropriate command to each
DC motor based on the value of the second
number. To change the motors rotation
directions, a miniature intermediate power
relay was used for each motor. The
operator can start and stop the DC motors
for moving the cutting system around the
tree trunk and also move it forward and
backward.

Figure 11. Block Diagrams of a Microcontroller

Page |8

6. Electronic Design
Electronic design involves designing and
choosing of the electrical components as
per our requirements. Some of those used
in our project are given below.

Timers: can be used for measuring the time

between two occurrences and can also
behave like a counter.
Power Supply Circuit: this powers the
MCU.

MICRO CONTROLLER
A microcontroller (Figure 11) is similar to
a processor in a computer. The primary
difference is that the microcontroller has
the CPU, the flash memory, the RAM and
external ports all built into a single chip.
All this makes the micro controller very
cheap and is true value for money.
The various components of the MCU
shown in Figure 11 are explained below:
Random Access Memory (RAM): RAM is
used for temporary storage of data during
runtime.
ROM: ROM is the memory which stores
the program to be executed.
SFR Registers: Special Function Registers
are special elements of RAM.
Program Counter: This is the engine
which starts the program and points to the
memory address of the instruction to be
executed.
Control Logic: As the name implies, it
which supervises and controls every aspect
of operation within MCU.
A/D Converter: A/D stands for analog to
digital. They convert analog to digital
signals.
I/O Ports: To be of any practical use,
microcontrollers have ports which are
connected to the pins on its case.
Oscillator: This is the rhythm section of
the MCU. The stable pace provided by this
instruments allows harmonious and
synchronous functioning of all other parts
of MCU.

7. Advantages and Disadvantages

- Advantages
Quality - Industrial automated mechanical
arm has the capacity to dramatically
improve product quality. Applications are
performed with precision and high
repeatability every time.
Production - With the mechanical arm,
throughput speeds increase, which directly
impacts production. Because an automated
mechanical arm has the ability to work at a
constant speed without pausing for breaks
or sleep, it has the potential to produce
more than a human worker.
Safety - Mechanical arm increases
workplace safety. Workers are moved to
supervisory roles where they no longer
have to perform dangerous applications.
Savings - Improved worker safety to
financial savings. There are fewer
healthcare and insurance for employers.
- Disadvantages
Expense - The initial investment to
integrated automated robotics into your
business is significant, especially when
business owners are limiting their
purchases to new robotic equipment.
ROI - Incorporating industrial robots does
not guarantee results. Without planning,
companies can have difficulty achieving
their goals.
Expertise - Employees will require
training program and interact with the new
robotic equipment. This normally takes
time and financial output.
Safety - Robots may protect workers from
some hazards, but in the meantime, their
very presence can create other safety
problems. These new dangers must be
taken into consideration.

Page |9

be very precise in their movements, reduce

labor costs, improve working conditions,
reduce material wastage and improve
product quality. This is why theyre very
important in industries because the overall
objective of industrial engineering is
productivity. The design of the robot arm
was limited to four degrees of freedom
since this design allows most of the
necessary movements and keeps the costs
and the complexity of the robot
competitively. The end effector is not
included
in
the
design
because
commercially available gripper is used
since it is much easier and economical to
use a commercial one than build it.

8. Conclusions
This paper presents the design and
development of robot arm for cutting a
tree, which has the talent to accomplish a
simple task, such as rotate, lower and raise
its arm, by being controlled by the
microcontroller is build successfully. The
weights of all the motors were put into
consideration when calculating the torque
by each joint. This is to make sure the
gears are arranged in a way that will
produce enough torque to carry the
succeeding load. Use of DC motor at the
base. The output torque of the DC motor is
higher than that of the stepper motors.
Using DC motor at this joint brought us a
step closer to solving the problem of
insufficient torque to carry the arm. We
used a microcontroller which provides
enough pins for selecting motors, hence
eliminating the need for decoders. From
our work, we deduced that in comparison
to humans, robots can be much stronger
and are therefore able to lift heavier
weights and exert larger forces. Thay can
9. References
[1]Manipulating Industrial Robots
Standardization Standard 8373, 1994.

Vocabulary,

International

Organization

for

[2]B. Siciliano, L. Villani and G. Oriolo, Robotics, Modeling, Planning and Control,
Springer, London, 2009.
[3]R. J. Wang, J. W. Zhang, et al., The Multiple-Function Intelligent Robotic Arms,
FUZZ-IEEE Journal, Korea, 20-24 August 2009
[4] microElectronika (2004). Architecture and programming of 8051 MCU (Chapter 1).
[5] Valavanis, K. P., & Saridis, G. N. (1992). Intelligent robotics. Academic Publishers.
[6] Appin Knowledge Solutions. Robotics. ISBN: 978-1-934015-02-5
[7] A. Ghosal, Robotics, Oxford, New Delhi, 2006.
[8] Brumbach ME, Clade JA (2003). Industrial Maintenance, Published by Delmar Learning.
[9] Mohanad Mahdi Abdulkareem, Qusay Adil Mohammed, Muhanned Mahmood Shakir
and Abdellatif BABA; Potentiometer control based 5 D.O.F. low payload robot arm;
Technical Report September 2016; DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.13789.61920.