An open-source robot arm design with ambitious goals for a completely new way to approach robotic arms. The design process will take several years but each element (such as joints) will offer value to designers & makers. You don't need to wait until a design is finished to learn & contribute.
PURPOSE STATEMENT: to design a robot arm using bio-inspiration for higher modularity and higher loads than leading commercial designs in 2023.
From David M: 95% percent of all of today's robots completely omit dynamics. Nobody cared until 2024.12.03, a very magical day. Mathematics which we developed 100 years ago are not being utilized. It's not too hard, but it is specialized and to make an elegant design that implements dynamics while accomodating materials, manufacturing, and software control is too difficult for any one company. For this reason, we will open the design to collaborate with experts globally.
More Open Source designs:
If an expert reviews this project, they will find numerous imperfections; potentially laughable ones. A well-trained mechanical engineer would not release such imperfections. But this project is not a release, just as every script posted in open software is not a final working script. We are pursuing a new paradigm, where open hardware ascends to match open software. In software, open development has surpassed privatized development. Developers discovered by publishing every step in realtime, we gain the world's contribution at every step, and 10,000 brilliant minds can outperform a well-paid team of 10 minds. The only way to reach the new paradigm is to opensource the full development process, not only the end result. So, we start the project with a goal and NOT with a build, and we trust experts to see the possibilities instead of the present status. Then, we can incite the collaboration necessary to achieve the impossible.
There is no intention to reproduce a result that has existed before, so the result cannot be bought. There is no deadline. The prerequisite to completion is expertise, not funding or parts or tools.
Updates and designs are somewhat blended together, since this project is more advanced. One could say it has a lower PRL (project readiness level) compared with sister projects, like Technology Readiness Level.
please see design logs page
| Github Repo | Website |
- COTS: commercial-off-the-shelf. Components with well-refined designs that can be purchased.
- Feel: For the robot, referring to a signal that can but isn't necessarily sensed and computed. It can be a digital datapoint from a sensor, a current or a voltage preceding a sensor, or a postprocessed datapoint derived from multiple inputs.
giving credit to prior works and contributions
- Daniel Amuedo's design of the first parametric bearing, adapted for joints. His youtube channel is Dangineering. I revised his original solidworks model to get my bearing to print nicely, then further changed it to become part of a collar joint. Thanks Daniel!
- Oren's review on E-skateboard regenerative braking. This data helps steer us to the right type of motor. Oren's Projects
Sources used in producing the project & documentation
- Markdown icons list on github
- Enhance image resolution online cutout.pro
- Fonts from Google Fonts
- Human Sketches from Royal Collection Trust
- Energy Regeneration trials from youtube Oren's Projects
- Icon Generator online ICO-convert
References in the discussion These are referred above using icon and number such as 🎓 1
- GummiArm Project: A Replicable & Variable-stiffness Robot Arm PDF Journal article, Youtube demo, and Github Repository
- SCARA Arm example, Pybot, opensource, Hackaday writeup
- What Bones are made of: NIH webpage
- What Robot Arms are made of: Makeitfrom Aluminums
- Setup of UR Robot Arm: universal robots video
- Fixtures for UR Robot: Vention.io
- UR3e robot manual PDF
- Chicken wing dissection PDF guide
- Kinova Robot Arm Manual PDF
- Leonardo Da Vinci, 1452 Repository by RCT