Smart Robotic Arm Control through Autonomous Object Detection and Retrieval

Abstract

This paper outlines the design and development of a robotic arm that can automatically detect and locate an object within its working envelope, reach to the object, grab the object with the aid of force feedback, bring it back to the user and transition back to user-control mode. A smart robotic arm like this can be used to control a brain computer interface (BCI) enabled prosthetic arm. This could be done by controlling the arm's coarse motion using BCI signals to the arm in manual mode while the fine motion control required for object capturing and retrieval could be performed by the smart robotic arm upon automatic detection of the object. The smart robotic arm was developed by interfacing force, distance and position sensors with a robotic arm possessing three actuated joints. Using feedback control and direct-inverse kinematic equations, the arm was controlled to perform autonomous object detection and retrieval.