Abstract
Abstract
Parallel port interface circuit is designed, fabricated and tested for programmable control of electrical motor actuators used in a cylindrical robotic manipulator. The robotic arm built in – house has four degrees of freedom through the use of five electrical motors (four for joint actuating and one for end–effector). The interface circuit consists of relays as output devices, an octal bus transceiver, and a quad 2-input exclusive-XOR gate as input devices. An optical mouse – sensor (one for each joint) is used to indicate the actual position of the joint and uses it as a feedback signal. A menu driven QBASIC program is developed for controlling the robotic arm using the manipulator kinematics. The program contains a counter for counting the variation in digital signal (changing times of the state). The entire circuits, devices, and the program worked accurately. The result shows that the optical mouse sensors function properly in the controlling system and displacement measuring.
