Hydraulic Robot Arm

Picked up a neat wooden robotic arm that uses three linked pairs of syringes as a hydraulic system. One pair swivels the base. Another lifts and lowers the arm. The third actuates the gripper. I used some Gareth-style DIY linear actuators to drive the control syringes, hooked them up to a Dagu Mini Driver board, and now I have a simple programmable hyrdaulic robot arm. The Arduinio code is in the attached zip file.

First Video: Test of the stock hydraulic robot arm from Marbles the Brain Store. 

Second Video: Test of th earm with one syringe controlled by a linear actuator. 

I take the arm to exhibit at my local children's museum, and it came to World Maker Faire 2016, where it was very popular.

If you are not very familiar with how hydraulics work (I wasn't until I researched it for this project), check out my hydraulics skill builder for robots post on Make.