Design and development of a robotic arm

Demand for assistive robots are increasing as they allow individuals to work independently and perform tasks that are impossible without them. This paper presents the design and development of 5-Degree of Freedom (DOF) robotic arm which is used for feeding the elderly or specially challenged people, where the position of the joints are controlled by the user. Using principles of robotic Kinematics and MATLAB, the robotic arm is controlled. The alogrithms are verified using stick diagram. A Graphical user Interface is developed for controlling the actuators which in turn controls each joint of the robotic arm. Arduino MEGA2560 I/O board is the main heart of this project which interface with the Graphical User Interface, motors and sensors. A mimic of the developed robotic arm is designed in MATLAB and it is simulated using forward and inverse transformation to check the accuracy of the algorithm.