Design and Implementation of Mobile Humanoid Robotic Arms

This paper proposes a system that designed to be used for picking or placing objects and to access areas that might be inaccessible to humans. The system comprises of three parts: the navigation algorithm, the robotic arms controlling interface and the live video streaming service. The shortest path between start and goal locations is computed via A* algorithm and forwarded to the mobile robot via a WLAN. The mobile robot uses Global Positioning System (GPS) and a digital compass for navigation. A Humanoid Robotic Arms (HRA) prototype with 5 Degrees-Of-Freedom (DOF) is designed. To control the HRA, the system uses a 3D human skeletal tracking method (implemented using Kinect sensor) and Inverse Kinematics. A Client/Server application is developed to transfer control signals and gather feedback signals from the robotic arms. The mobile robot reaches its final destination by a miss distance of less than three meters due to GPS inaccuracy. Depending on the feedback of the camera, a manual control from the PC base-station takes place to move it to the final destination. It successfully detects and avoids obstacles in its path using the 5 IR sensors. The system was successfully verified to pick and hold objects with one arm, but picking and holding objects with both arms was not verified due to insufficiency of the tracking capabilities (which implemented by the Kinect sensor and beyond the goal of this work).