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Design of a 3 DoF robotic arm

Conference Paper · August 2016

DOI: 10.1109/INTECH.2016.7845007

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 Design of a 3 DoF Robotic Arm
Ramish, 1Syed Baqar Hussain Farah Kanwal
Mechanical Engineering Department, Mechanical Engineering Department
NED University of Engineering & Technology, NED University of Engineering & Technology
1
Electronics Engineering Department Karachi, Pakistan
Sir Syed University of Engineering & Technology [email protected]
Karachi, Pakistan
[email protected], [email protected]

Abstract— The manipulability and the dexterity of any robotic calculated torques have been compared with the torques
manipulators depend upon its degree of the redundancy. Serial obtained from the computer simulation programs. The results
robotic arm is very popular in industrial applications because of found are satisfactory.
its simplistic designs. Serial robotic manipulators are also
designed for the joint fault tolerance. The design of three degree
of freedom serial robotic arm has been presented in this paper. II. LAYOUT OF ROBOTIC ARM
Its mechanical structure has been developed using the CAD
software. The analysis of the dynamic properties of the robotic
arm has been presented. Euler-Lagrange method has been Figure 1 shows the CAD model of robotic arm under study.
adopted to derive the complex equation of motion of the robotic
arm. The analytical results have been compared with the
simulations done on RoboAnalyzer© software. The results were
in quite agreement.

Index Terms—Redundant, kinematics, trajectory planning,

Lagrange-Euler, Denavit-Hartenberg

I. INTRODUCTION
Computer aided design and computer aided manufacturing
has played a great role in the progress of industrial automation.
Robotic manipulators have played a distinguished role in the
industrial automation. Nowadays, the design of robotic arms is
an attractive area of research. A serial manipulator is an open
chain configuration in which rigid links are joined by either
revolute of prismatic joints. The number of joints in an open
chain manipulator is equal to the degree of freedom of the
manipulator. [1]
In forward kinematics, the end-effector position and
orientation is determined from the given set of joint angles
whereas in inverse kinematics, the vice versa is done. In Fig. 1 Solid model of Robotic Arm
robotic applications, motion of end-effector is given in
Cartesian coordinates. However, the motion of the robotic arm The robotic arm design is influenced by a number of
is specified in terms of the joint angles, because the dynamics variables such as geometry of the manipulator, dynamics
of the manipulator is described in terms of these joint involved, the structural characteristics of the linkage system
parameters. [2] Trajectory generation involves finding the (manipulator) and the actuator characteristics. [4] The robotic
desired joint space trajectories given the Cartesian trajectories. arm resembles a human arm. The stationary part of the robot to
This is accomplished using the inverse kinematics. Two which all other parts are attached is called its shoulder. The
methods commonly used for kinematic modelling of the links are designed to be slender members to reduce its weight
robotic manipulators are the Denavit-Hartenberg convention which is crucial in reducing the power consumption during its
and the other method employs the screw theory technique. [3] operation. The joints are simple revolute.
A mathematical model of the robotic arm is necessary to The hand of robot carry end-effector (not shown here),
determine the forces and torques required by the actuators to might be any tool or gripping mechanism. The design of end-
accomplish the desired tasks. Euler-Lagrange formulation has effector is crucial to the satisfactory performance of the robotic
been used in this paper to calculate the joint torques, these
arm and hence its design is dependent on the shape, size and
weight of the object to be gripped. [5]

III. KINEMATIC ANALYSIS OF ROBOTIC ARM

In order to perform kinematic analysis, a coordinate frame has
been rigidly attached to each link. An inertial frame
has been attached to the base of robotic arm as shown in figure
2.

The transformation matrix Tji which helps in transforming the

position and orientation of to is given by

The transformation matrices for various links are given as:

Here, represents the transformation matrix of end-effector

frame with respect to base frame.
A. Inverse Kinematics of Robotic Arm
Fig. 2 Coordinate frames of different links Figure 3 shows the schematic of robotic arm useful in
Denavit-Hartenberg convention has been used to express the inverse kinematic analysis.
transformation of coordinates from one frame to another. Table
1 shows the DH parameters for various links.

Table 1 DH parameters for various links

Link
1 0 0
2 0 0
3 0 0

Here ai is the length of ith link and is constant whereas is the

joint angle made by ith link and is a variable.
Ai is the homogeneous transformation matrix that expresses the
position and orientation of with respect to

Fig. 3 Planar Robotic Arm

In order to determine the joint angles required for the end-
Where effector to reach the desired location (x,y) in the workspace of
robotic arm, it is necessary to know the coordinates of wrist
and the orientation of end-effector.
Let be the coordinates of wrist and be the angle
made by end-effector with respect to x-axis, then
Also,
(1
But
Obtaining β from equation (1),

Since (2
Obtaining 𝛾 from equation (2), one can find as,
The assembled Jacobian matrix of the whole system is given
And as
The above joint angles are for elbow down configuration.

B. Velocity Kinematics-Manipulator Jacobian IV. DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF ROBOTIC ARM

Jacobian matrix is one of the most important tools used The mathematical model of the robotic manipulator is
in robot motion control since it develops a relationship between necessary for designing its control system.[7] The kinetic and
the joint and end-effector velocities. The Jacobian is also potential energy functions of the manipulator were derived first
needed in the advanced robots employing sensors, necessary to then using Euler-Lagrange technique; the equation of motion
transform the rates of forces into joint coordinates. [6] was derived. The general form of equation of motion is given
Jacobian for an n-link manipulator is given by as:

Where ith column Ji is the Jacobian of ith link and is given by, (4

(3 Where is the n × n inertia matrix and is symmetric

and positive definite for each ϵ , is the matrix
From the forward kinematic analysis, we have containing quadratic terms in the first derivative of , where
the coefficients may depend on , is the vector
containing gravity terms and is the joint torque vector. [2]
The equation of motion for this robotic arm was derived
using MuPAD© which is a Matlab© based symbolic
toolbox.[8]

V. TRAJECTORY PLANNING
Trajectory planning is one of the most important tasks that the
robot controller has to perform. A trajectory is a function of
time q (t) such that q (t0) = qinit and q (tf) = qfinal. In this case,
tf− t0 represents the amount of time taken to execute the
Now plugging in the above vectors in equation (3), the trajectory. Since the position variable is shown as a function
Jacobian matrices for different links are evaluated as: of time, the velocity and acceleration is easily calculated by
mere differentiating. [2] Here q (t) is the joint variable.
The robot arm has to move such that the end-effector has to
reach a certain point in whose coordinates are given in the
Cartesian workspace. Inverse kinematics analysis help in
converting the Cartesian coordinates into joint space. Once the
desired joint angles of all the joints have been calculated, we
have two sets of initial and final conditions at each joint. We
need to generate a trajectory between these two points.
A. Cubic Polynomial Trajectories
A cubic trajectory for joint angle is of the form

The angular velocity for the joint is then calculated as

And angular acceleration is obtained as VI. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The dynamic equations of motion provide the basis for a

The unknown constants a0 to a3 are obtained from the four number of computational algorithms that are useful in
initial conditions i.e. mechanical design, control, and simulation. In inverse
dynamics, the required joint actuator torques/forces are
computed for a given a trajectory. Inverse dynamics is used in
feedforward control. The joint space inertia (mass) matrix is
used in analysis, in feedback control to linearize the dynamics,
and is an integral part of many forward dynamics formulation.
[9]

Figures 5 and 6 shows the joint torques obtained from

simulations from equations of motion obtained from
For the simulation of our robotic arm, we have assumed a derivation and by using software RoboAnalyzer ©
cubic trajectory with initial and final values of joint position respectively.
and velocities are as under,

All the three links will be following the same trajectory while
simulation. Fig 4 illustrates the trajectories of the motion of
each link.

Fig. 5 Joint Torques by Euler-Lagrange Equations derived

Fig. 4 Joint Trajectories

 [5] R. Chouhan, F. Kanwal, S. Ali, and N. Ali, “Design
and Development of a Prototype Robotic Gripper,” in
International Conference on Robotics and Emerging
Allied Technologies in Engineering, 2014, pp. 317–
320.
[6] J. et al Lenarčič, “DESIGN OF ROBOT
MANIPULATORS BASED ON KINEMATIC
ANALYSES,” Robot. Comput. Manuf., vol. 4, no. 1,
pp. 203–209, 1988.
[7] C. T. A. L.Lewis, Frank, Darren M.Dawson,
Manipulator Control Theory and Practice. New York:
Marcel Dekker Inc, 2004.
[8] W. O. Christopher Creutzig, MuPAD Tutorial. Berlin:
Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2004.
[9] R. Featherstone and D. E. Orin, “Dynamics,” in
Springer Handbook of Robotics, Berlin: Springer,
2008, pp. 35–65.
[10] U. Manual, “RoboAnalyzer,” no. March, 2012.

Fig.6 Joint Torques by RoboAnalyzer

Kinematically redundant manipulators are designed to

increase the manipulability and dexterity of a robotic
manipulator and also to incorporate the joint failure tolerance.
The design of the control system of any robotic system
requires the knowledge of its dynamic properties and the
mathematical equation of motion. The given study has aimed
to derive a complex mathematical equation of the three degree
of freedom robotic arm. This mathematical equation is useful
in the design of its control system like the computed torque
control and other such techniques.

The analytical results are in quite agreement with the

numerical ones. The RoboAnalyzer© software uses the
Decoupled Natural Orthogonal Complement (DeNOC)
Matrices based on recursive formulation. The joint torques are
curves quite intuitive and since the gravity was taken into
account the maximum values of torque at initial was
considered. The joint torques values decrease to zero and then
a negative torque is required to bring the assembly to rest.

REFERENCES
[1] R. M. Murray, Z. Li, and S. S. Sastry, A Mathematical
Introduction to Robotic Manipulation, vol. 29. 1994.
[2] and M. V. Mark W. Spong, Seth Hutchinson, “Robot
dynamics and control,” in Robot Dynamics and
Control, First., Wiley, 2004, pp. 187–221.
[3] C. R. Ã. Rocha, C. P. Tonetto, and A. Dias, “Robotics
and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing A
comparison between the Denavit – Hartenberg and the
screw-based methods used in kinematic modeling of
robot manipulators $,” Robot. Comput. Integr. Manuf.,
vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 723–728, 2011.
[4] J. Vertutt, “General Design Criteria for Manipulators,”
vol. 16, no. iii, pp. 65–70, 1981.

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