Robotic_Arm

Overview

A ROS package to simulate a simple 5 DOF robotic arm in gazebo and also to control it using a Tkinter UI based controller.

Robotic Arm Model

Technologies Used

Implementation

Designing the Arm

The robotic arm is designed in Onshape, a CAD software. The model is then exported as a URDF file along with the mesh files using the onshape-to-robot tool.

Integrating with ROS

The ROS control plugin is used for controlling each joint in the robotic arm via a dedicated topic. The plugin also provides topics to tune the PID variables for each joint's control system.

Creating the Controller

The controller is created using Tkinter, a GUI module for python.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Ubuntu 20.04
• ROS Noetic

For installing ROS refer to ROS Wiki

Installation

Create a catkin workspace

mkdir ros_ws
cd ros_ws
mkdir src
catkin build

To automatically source this workspace every time a new shell is launched, run these commands

echo "source ~/ros_ws/devel/setup.bash" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Clone the repository in the src folder in the catkin workspace.

cd ~/ros_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/Sakshi-1606/Robotic_Arm.git

Navigate back to the workspace folder and build the packages.

cd ~/ros_ws
catkin build

User Guide

Launching Gazebo Simulation

To launch the gazebo simulation use the command

roslaunch roboticarm roboticarm_simulation.launch

Robotic Arm Simulation World

Using the Controller

To access the controller run the command

rosrun roboticarm arm_controller.py 

References

• ROS Wiki
• ROS Control | ROS Robotics Learning
• ROS Control | Gazebosim

Project Mentors:

1. Joel Jojo Painuthara
2. Sakshi Bothra

Project Members:

1. Bakti Raju Karchi
2. Mohammed Shadab Alam
3. Nithin S
4. Sonali Kannojiya

License:

This repository is licensed under the BSD-3-Clause License