ARMazing! (Part One: the discovery)

This post will illustrate some ideas we had regarding the making of a robot arm. We are not looking to create something that looks like the human arm.

Not like this

We want to control the the robot hand in the x, y, z axis. The volume of space that the robot can reach does not have to be huge (it is also restricted to the Leap Motion's interaction space). 

Is it too ambitious to build a robot that has so much 'reachable' space

We had some lengthy discussion on whether we should invest time in making a robot arm. We didn't have any mechanical knowledge accept for Engineering first year Dynamics that most of us have forgotten. 

We found some inspiration online and got a lot of support from the work shop where Andrew and Walter works. We wanted to create something simple but strong enough to carry the weight of the 3D printed hand.

Then we found this:

The 'gripper' that we found could rotate about its wrist and the grip can open/close. It uses two stepper motors. After a handful of hours we found that it was not strong enough. It will not be able to support the weight of our 3D printed hand.

Then Andrew found this for us:

 This is our 'discovery'!

This is the official website. Here is more information about it.

As you can see above, we took it apart and connected the motors  directly to the 12volt supply. The motors work! In the next post we will explore the kind of things INSIDE this robot and find out how we can interface it with the Arduino.