Wireless Control of Six-axis Robot Arms by Leap Motion Sensor

Abstract

Most existing robot arms are controlled using wired or wearable controllers. A user must enter coordinates or control single-axis coordinate systems so that a robot arm can reach a designated destination. In this study, we developed a six-axis robot arm with a leap motion controller. The end position and coordinates of the developed robot arm changed in accordance with those of the right palm. By using the C# Web application programming interface, the coordinates of the right palm (X, Y, Z, pitch, yaw, and roll) were immediately uploaded to a webpage and shared in a local area network. Subsequently, the Python automatic indexing program was used to read the webpage data to construct a homogeneous matrix for the end of the robot arm. Finally, inverse kinematics was used to calculate the rotation angle of the motor of each axis. The finger bending ratio could be used to control the opening angle of the gripper of the robot arm. We measured the accuracies of the six-axis robot arm at two positions. At Position 1, the pose accuracies of the X-axis (AP x ), Y-axis (AP y ), and Z-axis (AP z ) were −6, 0, and −9 mm, respectively. The three-axis standard deviation of Position 1 was 2 mm, the pose accuracy (AP p ) was 11 mm, and the pose repeatability (RP l ) was 5 mm. At Position 2, the pose accuracies of the X-axis (AP x ), Y-axis (AP y ), and Z-axis (AP z ) were 10, −7, and −12 mm, respectively. The threeaxis standard deviation of Position 2 was 2 mm, the pose accuracy (AP p ) was 17 mm, and the pose repeatability (RP l ) was 4 mm.