Offline Simulation of Motion Planning of a Planar Manipulator in RoboAnalyzer and its Integration with a Physical Prototype

Thereare two important aspects of robotics education. First, learning the mathematics of a robot and second, hands on development of a physical prototype of the robot. There are plenty of resources and software available to help in teaching the mathematics involved and there are fewer resources available to help the students to work with the physical prototypes. Still less is the number of resources which combine both the aspects into one. This paper proposes a new motion planning module in RoboAnalyzer, a 3D model based software to teach robotics. It has a simpler interface to input the parameters of a 2-Revolute planar manipulator and perform kinematic analysis and motion planning to achieve linear and circular motion of the end-effector point. Once the offline simulation is satisfactorily observed, the joint trajectories can be sent to Arduino IDE through serial port communication. From Arduino IDE, one can send the joint trajectories to drive motors of a physical prototype. As a demonstration, the trajectories have been sent to a prototype developed using Dynamixel motors. The authors feel that such integrated approach of learning robotics would yield better results and also enable the students to become industry ready.