Virtual environment for local and remote control of a robot arm for support in engineering teaching

Abstract

This paper presents the design and implementation of a virtual platform that allows simulation and local and remote command and control of the SCARA robot arm called UV-CERMA, which is installed at the Robotics Laboratory of the Escuela de Ingeniería Eléctrica y Electrónica, Facultad de Ingeniería, Universidad del Valle. The robot has been underutilized for some years due to the obsolete control system. The platform, focused on the engineering education methodology, consists of two applications which simulate the robot and permit its remote and local command and control. One of the applications was implemented on LabVIEW software of National Instruments and the other application was programmed on free software using the open source language Java. Both applications implement forward kinematics and inverse kinematics, have a module for trajectories planning and operation, a module for monitoring the values of the variables and a three dimensional model of the robot. To manipulate the robot, an interface with a joystick was developed, enhancing the versatility of the platform. The applications communicate with the real robot using the National Instruments data acquisition card NI USB-6211, and for the remote connection they have a client-server architecture using TCP/IP sockets.