Robotic arm design, development and control for agriculture applications

In this work we analyze various methods and techniques for the design and development of robotic arm for agricultural applications. In this paper, a technique by which a robotic arm is controlled using a depth sensor is proposed. The depth sensor captures the user input and inverse kinematics algorithm is used to define the motion of the robotic arm. We develop a robotic arm which imitates the action of human arm. The movement of the human arm in 3D space is captured, processed and replicated by the robotic arm using inverse kinematics. In first place a Kinect sensor captures the input and coordinates of the shoulder, elbow and wrist joints of the user are obtained from it. The angles at each joint required to completely describe the position of the robot's joints are calculated using an inverse kinematics technique as mentioned above. Through a proper microcontroller board, the robotic arm end effecter moves to the required position which can be used to pluck a fruit or prune a branch etc.