Controlling a Pick and Place Mechanism

Project Description

In this project, the possibilities of controlling a radio controlled pick and place mechanism over the internet is going to be explored. To implement the idea a working prototype of a radio controlled pick and place mechanism will be designed using components generally available for electronic toys. The activities of radio controlled pick and place mechanism will be visually monitored and controlled from a remote location over the internet using the camera mounted on the pick and place mechanism.

The Diagram Explaining the Proposed Mode

The Control Mechanism interfaced with the RF Transmitter

The Following picture shows the PC side circuitry which is interfaced with a RF radio transmitter control circuit.

The Remote Mechanism interfaced with the RF Receiver

The Following picture shows the remote pick and place mechanism which is interfaced with a RF radio receiver circuit. In the bottom of the picture we see the CCD unit of the video camera.

The Remote View From the PC

The Following Screen shot shows the pick and place Mechanism's View of the object at remote location. The remote mechanism can be controlled from the computer interface by clicking the mouse on the appropriate button.

Another Remote View From the PC

The Following Screen shot shows the pick and place Mechanism's View of the object at remote location with different desktop background.

About the Project

For decades there has been a desire and a need for vehicles that can perform in remote areas. This desire and need has come from many areas, including :

Exploration of remote regions such as the ocean-bottom, military reconnaissance and personnel transportation,

Exploration of other planets, personal transportation vehicles in regions with extreme weather or climactic conditions,

Remotely operated vehicles used in places unsafe for human presence such as bomb-threatened areas,

And more recently, for recreation and competition purposes associated with rock-crawling and off-road challenges.

In this project, the possibilities of controlling a radio controlled pick and place mechanism using a PC is going to be explored. To implement the idea a working prototype of a radio controlled pick and place mechanism will be designed using components generally available for electronic toys. The activities of radio controlled pick and place mechanism will be visually monitored and controlled from a remote location over the internet using the camera mounted on the pick and place mechanism.

The Program Modules at control center.

Real time Video Playing Module.

Virtual Control Modules.

Joystick Control Module. (Optional)

The Program Modules at Remote Location.

The Wireless Video Camera Interface Module.

The Remote Control Interface Module.

Video Over IP Implementation.

The Software part of the implementation will be made using Microsoft Visual C++.

Background Study

The Existing Technologies

The Remote Manipulator System (RMS)

The Remote Manipulator System on the Space Shuttle, also known as the Canadarm, is an electromechanical arm that maneuvers a payload from the payload bay of the space shuttle orbiter to its deployment position and then releases it. It can also grapple a free-flying payload, maneuver it to the payload bay of the orbiter and berth it in the orbiter.

Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROV)

Remotely operated vehicles (ROV) are mobile tools used in environments too dangerous for humans. Typical ROVs consist of a camera and a two way communications mechanism that allows the remote operator to control the vehicle. The vehicle is likely to carry other tools that are also remotely operated.

Common examples of remotely operated vehicles are :

Submersibles used underwater in professional diving instead of human divers

Remotely controlled bomb disabling vehicles such as the type used by the Army

Unmanned aerial vehicles such as RQ-1 Predator

Space probes such as Spirit and Opportunity

Combat robots which are pitted against each other for sport

Submersible ROVs

Submersible remotely operated vehicles tend to be highly specialized. Some are designed for scanning wide swaths of the ocean floor while others are designed for photography and recovery. A number of deep sea animals and plants have been discovered or studied in their natural environment only through the use of ROVs.

Today, two important devices exist which are proven space robots. One is the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) and the other is the Remote Manipulator System (RMS). An ROV can be an unmanned spacecraft that remains in flight, a lander that makes contact with an extraterrestrial body and operates from a stationary position, or a rover that can move over terrain once it has landed. It is difficult to say exactly when early spacecraft evolved from simple automatons to robot explorers or ROVs. Even the earliest and simplest spacecraft operated with some preprogrammed functions monitored closely from Earth. One of the best known ROV's is the Sojourner rover that was deployed by the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft. Several NASA centers are involved in developing planetary explorers and space-based robots.

The most common type of existing robotic device is the robot arm often used in industry and manufacturing. The mechanical arm recreates many of the movements of the human arm, having not only side-to-side and up-and-down motion, but also a full 360-degree circular motion at the wrist, which humans do not have. Robot arms are of two types. One is computer-operated and programmed for a specific function. The other requires a human to actually control the strength and movement of the arm to perform the task. To date, the NASA Remote Manipulator System (RMS) robot arm has performed a number of tasks on many space missions-serving as a grappler, a remote assembly device, and also as a positioning and anchoring device for astronauts working in space.

Sojourner Rover

The above Picture is the one of the best known ROV's the Sojourner rover that was deployed by the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft. Several NASA centers are involved in developing planetary explorers and space-based robots.

Robots

Typical industrial robots do jobs that are difficult, dangerous or dull. They lift heavy objects, paint, handle chemicals, and perform assembly work. They perform the same job hour after hour, day after day with precision. They don't get tired and they don't make errors associated with fatigue and so are ideally suited to performing repetitive tasks. The major categories of industrial robots by mechanical structure are:

Cartesian robot /Gantry robot: Used for pick and place work, application of sealant, assembly operations, handling machine tools and arc welding. It's a robot whose arm has three prismatic joints, whose axes are coincident with a Cartesian coordinator.

Cylindrical robot: Used for assembly operations, handling at machine tools, spot welding, and handling at diecasting machines. It's a robot whose axes form a cylindrical coordinate system.

Spherical/Polar robot: Used for handling at machine tools, spot welding, diecasting, fettling machines, gas welding and arc welding. It's a robot whose axes form a polar coordinate system.

SCARA robot: Used for pick and place work, application of sealant, assembly operations and handling machine tools. It's a robot which has two parallel rotary joints to provide compliance in a plane.

Articulated robot: Used for assembly operations, diecasting, fettling machines, gas welding, arc welding and spray painting. It's a robot whose arm has at least three rotary joints.

Parallel robot: One use is a mobile platform handling cockpit flight simulators. It's a robot whose arms have concurrent prismatic or rotary joints.

Industrial robots are found in a variety of locations including the automobile and manufacturing industries. Robots cut and shape fabricated parts, assemble machinery and inspect manufactured parts. Some types of jobs robots do: load bricks, die cast, drill, fasten, forge, make glass, grind, heat treat, load/unload machines, machine parts, handle parts, measure, monitor radiation, run nuts, sort parts, clean parts, profile objects, perform quality control, rivet, sand blast, change tools and weld.

Outside the manufacturing world robots perform other important jobs. They can be found in hazardous duty service, CAD/CAM design and prototyping, maintenance jobs, fighting fires, medical applications, military warfare and on the farm.

Some robots are used to investigate hazardous and dangerous environments. It also demonstrates the technology necessary for a robot to explore the surface of the moon or planets. That is, the robot must be able to walk on rough terrain in a harsh environment, receive instructions from remote operators about where to go next, and reach those commanded goals autonomously. Robotic underwater rovers are used explore and gather information about many facets of our marine environment.

Unmanned Ground Vehicle

Unmanned ground vehicles or UGV are robotic platforms that are used as an extension of human capability. This type of robot is generally capable of operating outdoors and over a wide variety of terrain, functioning in place of humans.

UGVs are similar to unmanned aerial vehicle UAV technology and remotely operated vehicles. Unmanned robotics are actively being developed for both civilian and military use to perform dull, dirty, and dangerous activities.

There are two general classes of unmanned ground vehicles: Teleoperated and Autonomous.

Teleoperated UGV

A teleoperated UGV is a vehicle that is controlled by a human operator at a remote location via a communications link. All cognitive processes are provided by the operator based upon sensory feedback from either line-of-sight visual observation or remote sensory input such as video cameras. A basic example of the principles of teleoperation would be a toy remote control car. Each of the vehicles are unmanned and controlled at a distance via a wired or wireless connection while the user provides all control based upon observed performance of the vehicle.

There are a wide variety of teleoperated UGVs in use today. Predominantly these vehicle are used to replace humans in hazardous situations. Examples are explosives and bomb disabling vehicles.

Autonomous UGV

An autonomous UGV is essentially an autonomous robot but is specifically a vehicle that operated on the surface of the ground.

A fully autonomous robot in the real world has the ability to:

Gain information about the environment.

Work for months or years without human intervention.

Travel from point A to point B, without human navigation assistance.

Avoid situations that are harmful to people, property or itself

Repair itself without outside assistance.

A robot may also be able to learn autonomously. Autonomous learning includes the ability to:

Learn or gain new capabilities without outside assistance.

Adjust strategies based on the surroundings.

Adapt to surroundings without outside assistance.

Autonomous robots still require regular maintenance, as do other machines.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)

An unmanned aerial vehicle also called a drone, is a self-descriptive term used by the US military, the Israeli Defence Forces and others to describe the latest generations of pilotless aircraft. Taken literally, the term could describe anything from kites, through hobbyist radio-controlled aircraft, to cruise missiles from the V-1 Flying Bomb onwards, but in the military parlance is restricted to reusable heavier-than-air craft.

Some early UAV's are called drones because they are no more sophisticated than a simple radio controlled aircraft being controlled by a human pilot (sometimes called the operator) at all times. More sophisticated verions may have built-in control and/or guidance systems to perform low level human pilot duties such as speed and flight path stabilization, and simple prescripted navigation functions such as waypoint following.

From this perspective, most early UAV's are not autonomous at all. In fact, the field of air vehicle autonomy is a recently emerging field, whose economics is largely driven by the military to develop battle ready technology for the warfighter. Compared to the manufacturing of UAV flight hardware, the market for autonomy technology is fairly immature and undeveloped. Because of this, autonomy has been and may continue to be the bottleneck for future UAV developments, and the overall value and rate of expansion of the future UAV market could be largely driven by advances to be made in the field of autonomy.

Autonomy is commonly defined as the ability to make decisions without human intervention. To that end, the goal of autonomy is to teach machines to be "smart" and act more like humans. The keen observer may associate this with the development in the field of Artificial Intelligence made popular in the 1980's and 1990's such as expert systems, neural networks, machine learning, natural language processing, and vision. However, the mode of technological development in the field of autonomy has mostly followed a bottoms up approach, and recent advances have been largely driven by the practitioners in the field of control sciences, not computer sciences. Similarly, autonomy has been and probably will continue to be considered an extension of the controls field. In the foreseeable future, however, the two fields will merge to a much greater degree, and practioners and researchers from both disciplines will work together to spawn rapid technological development in the area.

To some extent, the ultimate goal in the development of autonomy technology is to replace the human pilot. It remains to be seen whether future developments of autonomy technology, the perception of the technology, and most importantly, the political climate surrounding the use of such technology, will limit the development and utility of autonomy for UAV applications.

Conclusion

The proposed remotely controlled pick and place mechanism similar to a sandard Remotely operated vehicles (ROV) has been successfully constructed using readily available components in the local market.

The mechanism was successfully controlled from a PC which was few meters away from the mechinsm. The remote location in which the pick and place mechanism is operating has been monitored through a camera connected with the USB port of the computer and driven from the computer using the mouse on the user interface.