By Boris Landoni on April 27, 2023
Building a robot can be a challenging task, even for the most experienced in the field, due to the difficulty of achieving smooth and precise movement through programming.
Build Some Stuff decided not only to design their own robot, but to do so using the least number of prefabricated parts possible, keeping the total cost very low.
The project involves using five servo motors to manipulate each degree of freedom, an Arduino Leonardo and a PCA9685 driver for control. After selecting the components, Build Some Stuff proceeds by creating 3D models of each joint of the robotic arm in Fusion 360 before 3D printing them. They also created a scaled-down version of the larger arm assembly and replaced the servo motors with potentiometers, allowing them to translate the position of the model into degrees for the motors.
Although simple, the code running on the Leonardo was responsive enough to move the servos in almost perfect sync with the model.