Design of Four Degrees of Freedom Robotic Arms for an Automated Roselle Tea Process Plant

In today’s competitive global markets, customers are demanding adjustable lot sizes, shorter lead times, higher quality and flexibility. In order to stay competitive in the market, companies need to attain both customer satisfaction and cost reduction in production operations. Material Handling Systems (MHS) is the place to accomplish this goal, since they have a direct impact on production. One of such system is the incorporation of material handling concept in production processes, which robotics serves as the major aspect. This paper focuses on the design of robotic arm for packaging Roselle tea in a process plant. The 3D model of the robotic arm was designed on Solid works Computer Aided Design (CAD) application software. It is a 4 Degree of Freedom computer controlled, programmable multifunctional manipulator consisting of a movable base (pitch 180
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), three links (connected by revolute joints), shoulder pitch: 90°, elbow pitch: 90° and the end effector; a cup with payload capacity: 50 gm, wrist pitch: 180°. Various aspects of the design include: Mechanical design of the robotic arm, torque calculation for each joint, kinematics modeling (direct kinematics and inverse kinematics) and programming of the controller. The simulation results will show the responses similar to a physical model. This method will help to reduce the need for testing on physical systems as long as the model sufficiently represents robotic arm to be built.