Vision-based control of robotic arm with 6 degrees of freedom

Abstract

This paper studies the procedure to program a vertically articulated robot with six degrees of freedom, the Mitsubishi Melfa RV-2SD, with Matlab. A major drawback of the programming software provided by Mitsubishi is that it barely allows the use of vision-based programming. The amount of useable cameras is limited and moreover, the cameras are very expensive. Using Matlab, these limitations could be overcome. However there is no direct way to control the robot with Matlab. The goal of this project is to set up a serial connection between the robot and Matlab. The procedure is investigated for a case in which the robot has to pick up geometrical objects and sort them. The camera, connected via a USB-connection to the PC, provides an image of the working field. This image is processed in Matlab. The resulting data is transformed to a trajectory with the different passing points. These points are converted to the correct format to send to the robot in a command through the serial connection. The results are simulated and performed with the actual robot.