Preliminary Study on the Development of Two Degree of Freedom Robotic Arms for Underwater Applications

Abstract

A robotic arm is a mechanical arm that is designed to work similarly to a human arm. The first robotic arm was introduced by a scientist named George Devol Jr. in the 1950s. During that time, robotics development was a bit slow because most of the robotics applications were used for space exploration. Then, in 1980s the robotic arms began to be integrated in automotive and manufacturing assembly lines. The aim of robotic arm development is to design an arm that can be stored without the arm dangle outside of the ROV body for underwater research and discovery. In order to meet the objectives of the study, the structure of the study was divided into three main stages, i.e. the modelling, development of hardware and simulation/testing. During the modelling stage, the SolidWorks software was used to design the structure of the underwater robotic arm. After the modelling stage, we continued with the hardware stage. In simulation/testing, the parameters of the arm are the extension and retraction, the maximum load that can be lifted (up to one hundred (100) gram) and the ability to work up to thirty (30) centimetre depth. There are so many advantages using a robotic arm in such places. One of the advantages is to lower the costs which means to reduce the labour costs. A robotic arm can work for 24 h daily without break. This leads to a big output of production if it is used in production lines. A robotic arm is also fast and accurate in performing specific tasks programmed by the user.