Easy questions about the Kinova Jaco arm

Help & Support Professional Robots
1

Hello, this is my first time posting.

I’m interested in purchasing one of the Kinova Jaco arms for my lab but have a few small questions that I could not find answers to in the documentation.

1 - Are optical encoders used for positioning of the arms, or are the accelerometers used for this? If optical encoders are used, what are the accelerometers used for?

2 - Is there an external control box for the arm, or are all the control electronics embedded?

3 - I notice the coding examples on the kinova website are in C#, is a C++ API also available?

I’m interested in mounting the arm on a mobile robot. We would like to control the arm both by teleoperation, and some easy autonomous tasks. Are there any limitations to doing this? Is interfacing with the arm as easy as plugging in a usb cable and power (as far as electrical connections are concerned)?

One last question, not a technical one, but roughly how long of a lead time can I expect if I order one (do you have them in stock)?

Thanks,

Aaron.

2

Hi Aaron,

]Encoders are used for the positioning of the joints. The accelerometer is places at the base to know its orientation with respect to gravity./:m]
]The controllers are embedded at each joint. You can use an external joystick or a USB cable to control it./:m]
]Unfortunately all the API examples are written in C# but they state in their API documentation that it is possible to use Linux in order to interface with the arm. If you want to use a particular robotics development environment such as ROS, please let us know and we can confirm if it is supported with the manufacturer./:m]
It is certainly possible to mount the arm on a mobile platform and you can interface to it by using a single USB cable indeed.