One Maker decided to build his own 5-DOF robotic arm using ServoCity parts, a Pololu Mini Maestro controller and an Arduino Uno.
If you’re wondering when you’ll get the time to work on all of your crazy projects, you might look forward to retirement. This is great if you’re close, though possibly discouraging for younger workers. Either way, 62-year-old “CyberMerin” decided to make his own robotic arm from scratch. As he puts it, “I promised myself was that when I did retire I was going to complete all those projects I had running around inside my head … That’s about 50 years or so of projects.”
He also notes that microprocessors didn’t exist years ago, and a machine shop was needed to make mechanical parts. It’s a great time to be alive for those that love to build stuff!
This particular project, a five-axis robotic arm is quite ambitious, works well and is extremely well-documented, even including pictures of 3D CAD models. Though complicated, the Arduino wiring is relatively simple since it communicates serially with a Mini Maestro USB servo controller. This allows the Maestro to do the “heavy lifting” for each servo. (Be sure to check out his article for a huge amount of background on building something like this.)
Human interface is handled by a nice graphic slider setup running in Processing 3. As shown in the video below it responds quickly to commands. (Check out around 3:00 when it stacks a green block on the other two.)
For an entirely different take on a robotic arm, here’s one that employs only three servos, a coffee tin for a base, and a gaming controller. Even with these limitations, it still manages to be able to manipulate objects.
Atmel | Bits & Pieces 