Manipulator Mechanism

The manipulator had a few design requirements that we used to ensure the manipulators success.

• Must be able to manipulate both top-facing and front-facing tasks

• Must be able to fold under the pipe

• Must be able to have cameras for wide views and close-up task views

With these requirements in mind, we designed a 4-link manipulator to meet all of our requirements. The 4 degree of freedom manipulator mounted to the middle of the robot so the robot could act as the z-axis rotator. The manipulator had the Intel Realsense camera mounted to it for wide-angle views of our environment and an endoscope camera coming through the middle of the end effector for close-up task views. 

The flat-link design was then replaced by the tube-stock design after we got HEBI tube stock adapters to easily attach the HEBI modules to the tube stock.

After experimentation with the arm mechanism, we found that having the arm in the middle would limit the ability of the robot to manipulate tasks that are in the corner of the field. This prompted a 5 degree of freedom manipulator mounted in the upper-left quadrant of the robot.