I have finally ordered the Lynxmotion Robot Arm (it’s been my dream for a while). I plan on controlling the arm with my Arduino Mega. I know how to control servos, however, I would like to construct a program were I can input x,y,z coordinates and have the robot arm travel to that location. I have no idea how to accomplish such a program, and I was wondering if anybody knew if this was even possible with an Arduino. If it is I suppose I would have to start with a formula that took into account each degree of freedom (4).
Any info/suggestions on the topic would be awesome!
4DOF makes it a little harder, as solving the IK (inverse kinematics) can yield two solutions. At any rate, the problem breaks down to solving IK’s, and scaling the motion, i.e., usually doing some coordinate transforms.
Start with a joystick control! Learn from there. There are some examples for arms, and solving arm move problems already on the list and on the website.
Take a look at the sample code for the BotBoarduino / PS2 controller. Everything you need is there - you only need to delete and change the input to keyboard. lynxmotion.com/images/html/build091b.htm
FYI - I purchased one of these arms quite awhile ago, which at that time, I had mounted on a 4wd Rover… Later I made my own base for it, where it is on it’s own… Later I was sent a PhantomX Reactor Arm (Trossen), which I then adapted the code to work with their setup. The code currently uses one of their Arbotix Commanders instead of the PS2 and has three modes, Work in 3D Cartesian mode, 3d cylindrical coordinate mode and a backhoe mode. Some day I may go back and port this version back to the Lynxmotion Arm, but I keep getting busy with other things
