SCORBOT-ER III robotic arm control with FPGA using image processing with the possibility to use as them as sun trackers

This paper presents a SCORBOT-ER III type robotic arm which can be controlled only with an FPGA board. The robotic arm is an industrial/educational robotic arm which can execute a high number of tasks, but instead of a computer, only an FPGA development board is the control system. The robotic arm can be used also as a Sun tracker robotic arm. If the position of the sun in tracked the solar panel's efficiency can be increased. The robotic arm is controlled using image processing techniques. The FPGA board has connected stereo cameras which captures live images with the robotic arm's current position. With mathematical calculations, also the target position of the robotic arm can be computed and SCPI command can be sent via RS-232 interface to the robotic arm to actually move it in the desired position. All the image processing and robotic arm control is done on the FPGA.