Three DoF articulated robotic manipulator for teaching and learning

Educational robots are used widely to teach robotics to different student levels. Studying robotics with a real model is important to implement the theory directly into a physical prototype. This paper proposes a 3 Dof articulated robotic arm for teaching and learning. The robotic arm was built using 3D printed parts as well as typical hardware such as nuts, screws, bearings, and rods. To achieve the appropriate torque, each axis employs a combination of pulleys and belts. Three stepper motors drive the robot, which is controlled by a combination of a CNC shield and Arduino Uno microcontroller. The most important feature of any robot is accuracy. Robots that have a high accuracy can do more significant tasks and produce more accurate data. The main problem with this type of robot is that they are expensive, and most technical universities do not allow students to work freely with these robots. In this research, a design has been proposed for the students to be able to learn robotics with commonly used hardware and cheap 3D printed parts. The two experiments using the proposed design gave a good accuracy at 22.5RPM. The accuracy is higher at 15 RPM than at 30 RPM in the first experiment (P1 to P2), but it drops at 37.5 RPM. In experiment 2 (P1 to P2 to P3 to P4), it gave the best accuracy at 22.5 RPM, but 30 RPM gave a higher accuracy than 15 RPM. In experiment 2, when the speed increased, the accuracy dropped. The goal of this research is to have robots that can help students learn robotics with cheap components that are easy to replace.