Department of Aerospace Engineering

MTech - Structures & Design

Batch 8
Id No Name
SC17M034 Girish Kumar S
SC17M035 P Jayaprakash
SC17M037 Vignesh K C
SC17M038 Nobil Vincent
SC17M039 A Sree Kumar

AE832: Introduction to Robotics

Lab: Round 2 Experiments
Experiment 1: MTAB Mini Robot

Subject: Batch 8, MTAB Mini Robot

Objective

1. Learn how to operate the robot safely, and how to program it.
2. Generate a program to perform a ball pick up and place task.
3. Calculate the precision of the robot.

Experiment Report

1. Brief description of MTAB Mini

MTAB Mini is an articulated robot with 5 rotary joints or 5 axes of freedom. The associated
links are listed below.
i. Base: It is the lowest supporting structure of the robot and is attached with the ground
through a rotary joint.
ii. Shoulder: It is the link directly attached to the base through the second rotary joint.
iii. Elbow: It is the link attached to the shoulder through the third rotary joint.
iv. Pitch: This link helps in the pitching movement of the gripper, with the help of the
rotary joint with which it is attached to the elbow.
v. Roll: This part helps in the roll movement of the gripper and is attached to the pitch.
In addition to the above, the gripper attached to the roll can perform the Open/Close action
to enable gripping of the job to be handled.
The details of the actuators and transmissions used for link movement is provided in table
below.

Axis Transmission system Motors Specification

Base and shoulder Gear train Stepper motor 57SH51 - 1A
Elbow Gear train Stepper motor 42SH38 - 4A
Pitch and roll Gear train Stepper motor 28SH32-0674A
Gripper Spur gear Rc servo motor HS 422
2. Coordinate system and D-H parameters
A detailed sketch of the model is provided in Figure-1 showing the parts, joints and
dimensions. The origin and directions of the global coordinate system is also provided in the
figure.
Skeletal diagram of the robot is given below along with the D-H parameters. The D-H
parameters to obtain the ith coordinate system from (i-1)th coordinate system is named as di,
ai, αi and θi.

Y4 X3
X4,X5 O4,Z4 a4
O5,Y5 O3,Z3 Y3
Z5
d6
Y6
a3
X6 O6,Z6
Y2

X2 a2
O2,Z2

d2

Z1

Y1
X1 O1
D-H Parameters
i d θ a α
1 - - - -
2 135 0 40 90
3 0 90 120 0
4 0 -90 100 0
5 0 0 0 90
6 37 0 0 0

➢ The zero and home positions for each link is provided in table below.
Link i Position vector (xi,yi) with respect to 0i
Zero Min Max Home
Base 1 (1,0) (1,0) (0.5,0.866) (1,0)
Shoulder 2 (1,0) (1,0) (0,1) (0,1)
Elbow 3 (-1,0) (0,-1) (1,0) (0,-1)
Pitch 4 (-1,0) (0.087,-0.99) (0.087,0.99) (0.078,-0.99)
Roll 5 (1,0) 0 (-0.939,0.34) 0
 Figure: 1
Revolute
joint
100

Pitch Elbow

37 Revolute
Revolute joint
Roll
joint

40 120

Shoulder
Gripper Arms
Revolute joint
Gripper Joints for
Opening & Closing

135

Z Base

Revolute joint X
Y
3. Program
The following program was generated to carry out the assigned job of picking the ball from a
given recess and placing it inside the destination recess.

HOME ALL
PTP X= -163.25 Y=178.71 Z=64.47 TX=132.41 TY=171.79 TZ=0
PTP X= -185.88 Y=203.5 Z=-36.93 TX=132.41 TY=185.06 TZ=0
GRIPPER CLOSE
PTP X= -184.85 Y=203.36 Z= 43.07 TX=132.41 TY=164.16 TZ=0
PTP X= -214.9 Y=-169.78 Z= 41.81 TX=218.31 TY=164.83 TZ=0
PTP X= -193.74 Y=-181.17 Z= -43.73 TX=223.08 TY=193.71 TZ=0
GRIPPER OPEN
PTP X= -193.32 Y=-180.78 Z= 46.34 TX=223.08 TY=168.69 TZ=0
HOME ALL
4. Precision calculation
Ideally, the precision measurement is to be carried out for each joint for its respective input
variables, the aggragate of which would give the overall precision of the robot. However, due
to the limitation of external measurement of the position along the z-axis perpendicular to
the floor, it was decided to simultaneously move all the joints and measure the overall
precision from the coordinates of the end position achieved.
A program was generated to execute the task repeatedly and the final positions of the gripper
was marked each time on a paper placed on the floor (x-y plane) to obtain the coordinates.
Six such readings were taken and the repeatability of the position was calculated as shown
below.
Repeatability of position, RPP = lm + 3*Sl
Where
1
Mean position error, lm = 𝑛 ∑𝑛𝑗=1 𝑙
𝑗
2 2
Position, lj = √(𝑥𝑗 − 𝑥𝑚 ) + (𝑦𝑗 − 𝑦𝑚 ) , where 𝑥𝑚 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑦𝑚 are mean values of x and
y position coordinates.
∑𝑛
𝑗=1(𝑙𝑗 −𝑙𝑚 )
2
Standard deviation, Sl = √ 𝑛−1
The raw data collected in the experiment is provided in table below.
Attempt no X (mm) Y (mm)
1 0 0
2 0 0
3 1 0.5
4 0 1
5 1 1
6 1 1.5

Here, the position coordinates of the position obtained in the first attempt was taken as the
origin, and the remaining position coordinates were measured with respect to the so obtained
origin.
The repeatability of position obtained from the above raw data is
RPP = 0.721 ± 3 * 0.173
 However, the following limitations and assumptions are to be noted for the above experiment
carried out.
o The paper used for marking the end position was assumed to be stationary and not
moving.
o Errors due to flexibility of the paper was neglected.
o Errors due to the size of pen nib point used for marking the end position was
neglected.
o The least cound of the scale used for position coordinate measurement was 1mm.
Hence, any point lying within the 1mm range was assumed to be 0.5mm.
o The position coordinates were measured manually. Hence, any manual errors in
measurement was also neglected.
5. Conclusion
The safe operation of the robot was learned and a program was generated to carry out the
assigned task, which was successfully demonstrated. Precision of the robot was also measured
though with the practical limitations point out in the report