We have created a prototype of a pick and place robotic arm controlled over the internet. It uses two Particle cores, one sensing the user gestures and the other moving the arm as per the user gestures.The commands get transmitted using Spark.Publish/Subscribe calls.
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Particle-core-1: This interprets the user’s gestures to control the robot, translates the gestures as text commands and sends it over the cloud to Particle-Core-2. This is interfaced with two accelerometer modules that senses the user gestures for moving the robotic arm and picking the object. The user commands are captured and transmitted to the core-2 using Spark.publish();
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Particle-core-2: This module receives the control commands from core-1 and activates the robotic arm accordingly. The user commands are received through Spark.subscribe(). Core-2 activates the Robotic Arm to move it up/down/right/left as per user gestures and picks the object. Robotic Arm from OWI has been used in this project The motors of the robotic arm are controlled using motor drivers . Two H-Bridge modules based on L298N are used to drive the motors using a 9V power supply.
As a future add-on, the sensors can be placed on human arm and the robot can be made to mimic the human arm.
More details can be found at the link