1、Design of a 5-Joint Mechanical Arm with User-Friendly Control ProgramAmon Tunwannarux, and Supanunt TunwannaruxAbstractThis paper describes the design concepts and implementation of a 5-Joint mechanical arm for a rescue robot named CEO Mission II. The multi-joint arm is a five degree of freedom mech
2、anical arm with a four bar linkage, which can be stretched to 125 cm. long. It is controlled by a teleoperator via the user-friendly control and monitoring GUI program. With Inverse Kinematics principle, we developed the method to control the servo angles of all arm joints to get the desired tip pos
3、ition. By clicking the determined tip position or dragging the tip of the mechanical arm on the computer screen to the desired target point, the robot will compute and move its multi-joint arm to the pose as seen on the GUI screen. The angles of each joint are calculated and sent to all joint servos
4、 simultaneously in order to move the mechanical arm to the desired pose at once. The operator can also use a joystick to control the movement of this mechanical arm and the locomotion of the robot. Many sensors are installed at the tip of this mechanical arm for surveillance from the high level and
5、getting the vital signs of victims easier and faster in the urban search and rescue tasks. It works very effectively and easy to control. This mechanical arm and its software were developed as a part of the CEO Mission II Rescue Robot that won the First Runner Up award and the Best Technique award f
6、rom the Thailand Rescue Robot Championship 2006. It is a low cost, simple, but functioning 5-Jiont mechanical arm which is built from scratch, and controlled via wireless LAN 802.11b/g. This 5-Jiont mechanical arm hardware concept and its software can also be used as the basic mechatronics to many r
7、eal applications.KeywordsMulti-joint, mechanical arm, inverse kinematics, rescue robot, GUI control program.I. INTRODUCTION NOWADAYS, many kinds of mechanical arms are used in various applications such as in semiconductor fabrications, automobile manufacturing, various industries, medical operations
8、, transportations, educations, or even in space missions 12. There have been dramatically developments in commercial and research fields for manually control, semiautonomous, and autonomous mechanical arms. One of the most important fields that mechanical arms involve and can help to save human live
9、s is the Urban Search and Rescue field (USAR). When earthquake disasters or building collapses happen, the rescue robots can bypass the danger and expedite the search for victims immediately. These robots can help to reduce personal risk to workers by entering the unstable structures, access the ord
10、inarily inaccessible voids and extend the reach of USAR specialists to go places that were otherwise inaccessible 3. Robots can assess structural damage in remote locations where the operators cannot see. They can carry temperature, carbon monoxide, LEL (explosive limit), oxygen, pH level, radiation
11、 and weapons of mass destruction sensors on board in order to conduct atmospheric reading and hazardous materials detection and analysis to warn the rescue personnel. During the search they can deposit radio transmitters to be able to communicate with victims, use small probes to check victims heart
12、 rate and body temperature and supply heat source and small amounts of food and medication to sustain the survivors. There is the need to develop the leading edge hightechnology enabling the system with autonomy, which comes with high cost and many unsolved research issues. On the other hand, there
13、is the need for simple, cost-effective systems to be dispensable. Dispensable robots can be risked in searching for survivors in unstable structures and confined spaces. From this perspective, the domain of rescue robots is significant scientific contributions toward the development and it is also w
14、ell suited for education. A lot of rescue robot competitions have been held lately with the main purpose of encouraging students and researchers to share and develop their robots for practical usage in the real situations. The most popular rescue robot contest is the World RoboCup Rescue Robot Leagu
15、e Competition, which started in 2001 4. This competition is one of the inspirations for Thailand Rescue Robot Championship to be held in 2004. In this paper, we design and implement a 5-Joint mechanical arm with a four bar linkage, including the userfriendly control/monitoring program for a rescue r
16、obot, named CEO Mission II as shown in Fig. 1, which competed in the Thailand Rescue Robot Championship 2006. This 5-Joint mechanical arm provides capability to look over the partitions and solves the problem of forward access or high level access due to more degree of freedom than the high mast of CEO Mission I 5. It can be stretched to 125 cm long, and equipped with CCD cameras and many sensors at the tip of mechanical arm for surveillance and getti
