For the midterm project, I finally made a simple robotic arm with a smiling face. I named it Frankenstein I, symbolizing a creature crafted from a collection of discarded materials.

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Four pushbuttons control the arm’ position in Cartesian space, while a potentiometer to adjusts its moving speed. When the arm moves outside its workspace, the face turns sad, smiling again when it returns to a valid position.

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When designing this project, I had three objectives:

This is why I used only basic components and assembled them with tap, without neatly wrapping the wires. But I’m glad that I incorporated digital input, analog input and inverse kinematics into real-world project. In the end, it is small but it is a robotic arm!

Here is the source code of this project. If you like, please give it a star! Next, I’ll briefly explain the whole process and share some thoughts.

Preparing the components

Theses are the main components needed for this project, which are very basic and easy to obtain. I found a discarded wood and split it into two sticks and a wooden base with my bare hands. After that, I borrowed some wires, a motor servo and a LED Matrix with some classmates. Then I was ready to go!