Robotics engineers from the "Kalashnikov Academy" youth technopark have created a prototype of a three-axis robotic manipulator with three operating modes for studying the design, programming, and control of industrial equipment. The prime cost of the development is up to 15 thousand rubles, which is three times cheaper than analogues. This was reported by the concern's press service.
Industrial robotic manipulators are inaccessible for study due to their high price and closed source code. Young engineers Nikita Verkhovov, Marat Zakirov, and Mikhail Nekrasov solved this problem.
They developed a robotic manipulator based on Arduino Nano (a compact board with an ATmega328P microcontroller) with an HC-12 wireless communication module. The automated device provides absolute positioning of the working limb (at a specific angle relative to the base coordinate system) and reproduces a user-defined sequence of movements.
The parts for the robot were 3D-printed at the academy. The students also wrote a program to control four stepper motors, a servo drive, and a motor.
Yegor Izibaev, a teacher at the "Kalashnikov Academy", highly praised the work of the young engineers.
There are currently solutions on the market costing 50,000 rubles and more, but the value of the guys' project lies not only in the lower initial price, but also in the independent study of the design.
In the new academic year, the students plan to improve the robotic manipulator and make a casing for it. However, it can already be used in schools for robotics classes, the concern's press service concluded.