Materials Today: Proceedings 45 (2021) 377–384

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Materials Today: Proceedings

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matpr

Design and analysis of gantry robot for pick and place mechanism with
Arduino Mega 2560 microcontroller and processed using pythons
G.S. Sharath, Niranjan Hiremath, G. Manjunatha
School of Mechanical Engineering, REVA University, Bengaluru 560064, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Robots are extensively used in industries for their precision work and amount of work that one can obtain
Received 2 September 2020 without any defects. In this paper we are using a gantry robot for as it does not occupy the floor space
Received in revised form 21 November 2020 therefore reducing the distance for reachability of the parts and hence reducing unnecessary material
Accepted 30 November 2020
for guide way. Robots work in strictly defined path and there is no or very little change in such systems
Available online 25 February 2021
in order to overcome this we are using a vision based control system to make the system dynamic in nat-
ure the images are picked by using a USB camera processed images of the object is transmitted via serial
Keywords:
communication to the Arduino Mega 2560 microcontroller and processed using pythons open source
Gantry robot
Machine vision
computer vision (Open CV) image to process the image captured by the USB camera to find the exact col-
Image processing our and to pick the object and sort it.
Arduino microcontroller Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Open CV Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 4th International Con-
Python ference on Advanced Research in Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering-2020.

1. Introduction capacity to configure systems in the industrial environment.

Nowadays, markets demand rapid adaptations of processes, as well
In recent years, robotic automation is a process that is extre- as improvements in productivity, systems safety and, essentially,
mely important for industrial environments, since it improves people safety. Industrial automation and robotic systems allow
the quality while reduce the time spent to accomplish a given task, task execution over 24 h/day, while maintaining performance
all with a minimal human intervention. People always been seek- and quality, and decreasing/eliminating worker’s contact with dan-
ing for means of developing intelligent machines for their further gerous or unhealthy activities. Thus, industrial automation and
employment to a variety of useful applications which has already robotics have become key concepts to improve both the manufac-
achieved tremendous advances in the field of robotic. Workers turing and the safety engineering. On other hand, the connectivity
usually operate machines so that they can perform certain task. and communication between peripheral devices and controllers
Operating process requires robust functional algorithms to deliver are key factors for the implementation of systems according to
a desirable outcome efficiently. The main objective of the sorting the concept of Industry 4.0, which has been reformulating how
machine is to control the robotic arm to perform exact movements to control and manage industrial processes. Industry 4.0 combines
for picking up arbitrary colour objects from the panel and put it aspects. From the physical and virtual worlds, information tech-
into an assigned sorting boxes. We present a new method to sort nologies and cybernetic systems to create a new integrated
objects automatically using single camera image processing tech- worker-machine manufacturing environment. Computer vision
nique and Inverse Kinematics algorithm. Colour-based detection, has been successfully applied in process automation, by adding
segmentation and locating objects captured by the camera in 2D sensory capabilities that help performing positioning task. The
plane are used to generate commands through a serial communi- enhanced perception about the environment and or the objects
cation to a robotic arm controller for 3D picking and repositioning brings efficiency to operations management since visual informa-
of the objects. The fast development in the information and com- tion can be used to change task execution and to choose the most
munication technology has caused a great Impact in the fields of appropriate action to each situation. This work proposes an
industrial automation and robotics. This evolution changed indus- approach to control the position of a Cartesian robot (gantry robot)
trial processes, bringing about more simplicity, adaptability and with the aid of a computer vision system. We address the class of

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2020.11.965
2214-7853/Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 4th International Conference on Advanced Research in Mechanical, Materials and
Manufacturing Engineering-2020.
G.S. Sharath, N. Hiremath and G. Manjunatha Materials Today: Proceedings 45 (2021) 377–384

Table 1 accordance to the required one then it will be rejected. The com-
Types of CNC Shields. plete sorting system operates on image processing using the
Name Stepoko Gsheild5 CNC Shield V3.51 MATLAB application & microcontroller which will control different
Manufacturer SparkFun Synthetos Protoneer motors in the system. Machine vision based on colour concept has
Number of Axis 3 3 4 found its wide application in the pharmaceuticals industry, agri-
Voltage (Volts DC) 12–30 12–30 8.2–45 culture industry and assembly of parts especially in automobile
Current (Amps) 2 2.5 2.2 industry. This technology can solve problems formerly restricted
Modular Stepper Driver NO NO YES
Stepper Driver Chip DRV8811 DRV8818 DRV8825 or A4998
to manual inspections & sorting [1,2] (Table 1).
Maximum Micro 8X 8X 32X or 16 X
Stepping
GRBL Preloaded YES NO NO 2. Methodology
Shield Cost 11,391 3,822 259
Arduino Cost 0 814 814
2.1. Design of robot
Driver Cost 0 0 784
(Included) (Included) (Price for 4 Drivers
A4998) Design of Robot using solid works software individual parts
Total Cost 11,391 4,636 1,857 were designed using the solid works software designed parts were
analyzed using solid work simulation by applying load and the
results obtained were used for further changes in design and then
tasks in which the robot must process several objects placed in a remodeled until it met our specification the parts that were tested
nearly organized way on a horizontal plane below the robot. In this are
paper, we are planning to do color detection and recognition for
three basic colors Red, Green and Blue and to make sure that  Frame
Machine Vision based Color detection and recognition is accurate  Guide Wheels
and precise and is also able to withstand ambient lighting condi-  Acrylic Plates
tions, pattern orientation and multiple instances, blur and noise
conditions. Machine vision performs the tasks that are equivalent The Frame had to withstand self weight and the weight of the
to human vision. It helps to automate the systems where there stepper motors and acrylic plates
are limitations of human vision like detecting various shades of The guide wheels had to have minimum deformation so as to
colours or determining high precise dimensions and thus permit- provide precisie movement based on stepper motors input
ting human employees to serve in more appropriate positions. The acrylic plates has to withstand the load of the stepper
Now, what happens when the questions turn to ‘‘Is this part of cor- motor and shouldn’t bend so as to provide proper power transfer
rect colour?” or ‘‘Which parts are blue and which red?” So in our to pulley
system, colour based identification of the parts will be done and Assembling the parts in solidworks helped us to create changes
then it will be sorted according to different colours. After recogniz- with respect to placement of parts resizing and interference
ing the colour of the object, robotic arm will automatically pick & between parts while joining were redone by placing holes where
place it accordingly. If the colour of the work piece is not found in there are no interference

Fig. 1. Methodology Flow Chart.

378
G.S. Sharath, N. Hiremath and G. Manjunatha Materials Today: Proceedings 45 (2021) 377–384

Fig. 2. Aluminum frame develop.

Fig. 3. Frame Study Results.

Manufacturing of parts, the acrylic parts were laser cut so as to out the object dimensions and send the appropriate control signals
get clean cuts with the help of drafting made with solidworks and to the Articulated Robot via Arduino microcontroller to pick and
the frame material used was readily available in the market the fix- place the object and sort them at expected location from unknown
tures holding the frames were 3d printed location. The system can be controlled by Python and Arduino
Electronics selection the Microprocessor was selected for its Mega in PC [3,4,5].
storage and compability with CNC Shield and stepper motor driver,
we wanted the setup to be modular so as to change the affected
2.3. Bearings
part rather than the whole setup which would be a costly.

A bearing is a machine element that constrains relative motion

2.2. Hardware used to only the desired motion, and reduces friction between moving
parts. The type of bearing used in this are Radial Ball Bearing
The main objective of this paper is to visually track the object (624ZZ), Flanged ball Bearing (F686ZZ), Thrust ball bearings
and transmit the image to PC running python programming to find (51105).
379
G.S. Sharath, N. Hiremath and G. Manjunatha Materials Today: Proceedings 45 (2021) 377–384

Fig. 4. Frame Displacement and deformation.

Fig. 5. Guide Wheel.

2.4. Stepper motor driver 2.6. Switch mode power supply (SMPS)

Stepper motors don’t rotate in the manner of a traditional The SMPS is a versatile power supply as we can choose from dif-
motor instead, they step. ferent topologies like Step – up (Boost), Step – down (Buck), power
supplies with isolation at input and output depending on the type
of application.
2.5. Stepper motor

A stepper motor, also known as step motor or stepping motor, is 2.6.1. Arduino Mega 2560
a brushless DC electric motor that divides a full rotation into a Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform
number of equal steps. based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It is
380
G.S. Sharath, N. Hiremath and G. Manjunatha Materials Today: Proceedings 45 (2021) 377–384

Fig. 6. Guide Wheel Displacement and Deformation.

Fig. 7. Acrylic Plate.

intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in 3. Design, analysis & selection of material
creating interactive objects or environments.
The Arduino Mega 2560 R3 is an open source precise microcon- 3.1. Design, analysis & selection of frame material
troller board Successor to the Arduino Mega based on the
ATmega2560 SMD chip. The Mega 2560 R3 also adds SDA and The frame we selected is already available in the market which
SCL pins next to the AREF. In addition, there are two new pins has guideways for the rollers from the supplier precision bearing
placed near the RESET pin. One is the IOREF that allow the shields house made out of Aluminium 6063 T5 which costs at 0.25 paisa
to adapt to the voltage provided from the board. The other is a not per mm.
connected and is reserved for future purposes. The Mega 2560 R3 We used the companies’ 2d part drawings to create frame in the
works with all existing shields but can adapt to new shields which software of the following size
use these additional pins. Advantages of using Aluminium

381
G.S. Sharath, N. Hiremath and G. Manjunatha Materials Today: Proceedings 45 (2021) 377–384

Fig. 8. Acrylic Displacement and Deformation.

Fig. 9. Gantry Robot.

Fig. 10.
Fig. 11.

382
G.S. Sharath, N. Hiremath and G. Manjunatha Materials Today: Proceedings 45 (2021) 377–384

3.2. Static stress analysis of aluminium frame

The maximum stress distribution at the meshed frame as

shown in above figure. The equivalent stress is distributed at the
centre of the meshed frame (Figs. 1–14).
The total deformation of meshed frame as shown in above fig-
ure and it is showing how much deformation is happening in
frame. The red colour shows maximum deformation and blue indi-
cates minimum deformation.
The maximum stress distribution at the meshed guide wheel as
shown in above figure. The equivalent stress is distributed at the
centre of the meshed wheel.
The total deformation of meshed guide as shown in above figure
Fig. 12.
and it is showing how much deformation is happening in guide.
The red colour shows maximum deformation and blue indicates
1. Aluminium is the most abundant resource, providing a cost effi- minimum deformation.
cient product The maximum stress distribution at the meshed plate as shown
2. Aluminium is non-magnetic, non-sparking conductor, which in above figure. The equivalent stress is distributed at the centre of
makes it suitable material for Robot construction [5,6,7,8,9]. the meshed plate.

Fig. 13. Arduino Architecture.

Fig. 14. Circuit diagram of SMPS.

383
G.S. Sharath, N. Hiremath and G. Manjunatha Materials Today: Proceedings 45 (2021) 377–384

3.3. Electronic components complexity of a timing belt and zero-backlash cable drive circuit in
place of the cost of an expensive gear head. In motor selection, we
3.3.1. CNC Shield used stepper motors for their high torque at low speeds, in
The CNC Shield was designed by Protoneer.co.nz to take advan- exchange for a highly-reduced brushless or brushed motor. These
tage of the demand for a low-cost controller solution for DIY CNC design tradeoffs were chosen for the envisioned target application
machines. of robots interacting with unstructured environments such as a
There are two main types of Arduino CNC shields. typical home or workplace, where the safety of intrinsic mechani-
cal compliance is an important design consideration. The cost- con-
1. Integrated Stepper Driver: The stepper motor drivers are inte- trolling tradeoffs described in this paper were made as an effort
grated into the shield. To replace the drivers, the chip on the cir- towards designing affordable compliant manipulators, an area of
cuit card must be de-soldered and a new one soldered into research which, to date, has received little attention, and which
place. we propose could have a large impact on the speed of adoption
2. Modular Stepper Driver: The stepper motor drivers are modular of robots into typical homes and workplaces.
and plug into a set of headers on the circuit board.
Declaration of Competing Interest
3.3.2. Arduino architecture
Basically, the processor of the Arduino board uses the Harvard The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
architecture where the program code and program data have sep- cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
arate memory. It consists of two memories such as program mem- to influence the work reported in this paper.
ory and data memory. Wherein the data is stored in data memory
and the code is stored in the flash program memory. The References
Atmega328 microcontroller has 32 kb of flash memory, 2 kb of
SRAM 1 kb of EPROM and operates with a 16 MHz clock speed. [1] M. Saedan, H. Marcelo, Inter. Conference on Robotics and Applications (2001)
152–157.
[2] M. Sabin’s, V. Thakur, R. Thorat, G. Yeole, C. Tank, Int. J. Com. Eng. Appl. (2015).
3.3.3. Switch mode power supply [3] Rani A. Magadum, Uttam Bombale, Int. J. Robot. Res. Develop. (IJRRD) 9 (1)
Majority of Electronic DC Loads like Microprocessors, Microcon- (2019) 43–48.
[4] Mary S. Pearl, C. Mahesh, Int. J. Trends Eng. Tech. (2015).
trollers, LEDs, Transistors, ICs, and Motors etc. are supplied with [5] Anita Gade, Yogesh, Inter. Conference on Data Management, Analytics and
standard power sources like batteries for example. Unfortunately, Innovation, 2017.
the prime problem with batteries is the voltage is either too high [6] Tarkesh S. Pujari, S.B. Deosarkar, Inter. Conference on Recent Trends in
Electronics Information & Communication Technology, 2017.
or too low. Hence, an SMPS will provide a regulated DC output. [7] Masahiko Mikawa, Yuya Morimoto and Kazuyo Tanaka, IEEE Inter. Symposium
SMPS is a versatile power supply as we can choose from differ- on Robot and Human Interactive Communication, 2018.
ent topologies like Step – up (Boost), Step – down (Buck), power [8] Jia Liu, Feng Zhu, IEEE INFOCOM 2017 – IEEE Conference on Computer
Communications, 2017
supplies with isolation at input and output depending on the type
[9] Deepthi Unnikrishnan, C.R. Aswani, Arjun K Jayaprakash, Ganesh S Inter, J Eng.
of application. Res. Technol. (2017).
Coming to the major factor of why we need SMPS, the efficiency
of a good SMPS design can be as high as 90% or even more. In con- Further reading
trast, the efficiency of a Linear Regulated Power Supply is depen-
dent on the voltage drop at the pass transistor. [10] S. Priya, M. Ragavi, Int. J. Recent Technol. Eng. (2019).
[11] V. Sundara Mahalingam, Saravanan Aravind, R. Tharini Devi, Int. J. Innov.
Emerg. Res. Eng. (2017).
3.4. Conclusions

We have presented the design of a low-cost robotic arm useful

for manipulation research. In gearing, we traded off the space and

384