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Introduction Design Implementation: Hardware Implementation: Software Results & Video Reflection Team Additional Materials

A Ball Catching 7 DOF Robot Arm

Introduction

Our project was the control of a custom-built 7-DOF robot arm (hereby referred to as “Koko”) to catch a thrown ball in real time. There were four major goals:

  1. The implementation of a computer vision system to facilitate our trajectory estimation
  2. The ability to quickly determine with as high a degree of certainty as possible the trajectory of a ball thrown through the air
  3. The implementation of real-time 7-DOF position control
  4. The computation of and actuation towards a valid point in space where the end effector of the arm can “catch” a thrown ball with a velcro pad


This project considers a common prototypical human action: catching an object. The successful implementation of our project and others similar to it can be building blocks for motions involving higher degrees of dynamic complexity, perhaps eventually rivaling human reaction times and flexibility. To solve our problem, we needed to utilize a feedback system with a quick sampling rate and also must simultaneously compute a high dimensional kinematic solution in tandem with knowledge of the motion of the thrown ball. Much of the difficulty of this task lies in implementing software solutions to hardware constraints. As the ability to solve prototypical tasks such as catching improve, we could make strides in areas such as prosthetics, security, tracking, and more.

Design