Course Content

The field of robotics has its origins in science fictions. The word robot comes from the Czech word "robota" means forced labor in 1920. It took another 40 years before the modern technology of industrial robotics began. Today, robots are highly automated mechanical manipulators controlled by computers. A robot may appear like a human being or an animal or a simple electro-mechanical device. A robot may act under the direct control of a human (e. g. the robotic arm of the space shuttle) or autonomously under the control of a programmed computer. Robots may be used to perform tasks that are too dangerous or difficult for humans to implement directly (e. g. nuclear waste cleanup) or may be used to automate repetitive tasks that can be performed more cheaply by a robot than by the employment of a human (e. g. automobile production) or may be used to automate mindless repetitive tasks that should be performed with more precision by a robot than by a human (material handling, material transfer applications, machine loading and unloading, processing operations, assembly and inspection).

The last two decades have witnessed a significant advance in the field of robots application. Many more applications are expected to appear in space exploration, battlefield and in various actives of daily life in the coming years. A robot is a mechanical device that performs automated tasks and movements, according to either pre-defined program or a set of general guidelines and direct human supervision. These tasks either replace or enhance human work, such as in manufacturing, contraction or manipulation of heavy or hazardous material. Robot is an integral part in automating the flexible manufacturing system that one greatly in demand these days. Robots are now more than a machine, as robots have become the solution of the future as cost labour wages and customers demand. Even though the cost of acquiring robotic system is quite expensive but as today's rapid development and a very high demand in quality with IS0 standards, human are no longer capable of such demands. Research and development of future robots is moving at a very rapid pace due to the constantly improving and upgrading of the quality standards of products. 

The robots play important roles in our lives and are able to perform the tasks which cannot be done by humans in terms of speed, accuracy and difficulty. Robots can be employed to imitate human behaviours and then apply these behaviours to the skills that leads the robot to achieve a certain task.

A robotic arm is thus a type of mechanically coupled or joined arm, run by programmable commands, with similar functions to a human arm. It may be the sum total of the mechanism links or may be part of a more complex sized robot. A typical robotic arm has the following components:

1.Links and joints

2.Actuators

3.Controller

4.End-effector

Conclusion

In this project we have interfaced the robot with different kinds of I/O devices and our method allows for storing more programs to enhance more functionality. 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. They can be very precise in their movements, reduce labor costs, improve working conditions, reduce material wastage and improve product quality.

This is why they’re very important in industries because the overall objective of industrial engineering is productivity. In this project, the procedure of building an articulated arm robot using a microcontroller (PIC16F877A) and servo motors with the help of PWM has been discussed. The building procedure consists of building the kinematic structure of robot, hardware design and implementation, software design and implementation and microcontroller programming.

It is important to recall that each servo motor has a different pulse width range where a pulse can have different effects on each servo, therefore it is important to first simulate the system and then implement it accordingly. It is also essential to consider the built-in oscillator of the microcontroller which is usually 1MHz. Different values of the oscillator can cause the system to not operate properly.