Pick and place robot: pick up payload from location x and drop accurately and quickly to position y.
Mechanical design of a truss cantilever to act as a crane arm. A DC motor is placed at the base to rotate the crane by 360 degrees.
An electromagnet is placed at the tip of the crane, and is energized to pick up a metal payload. The truss then moves to the desired angle and drops the payload by de-energizing the electromagnet.
The DC motor is driven by an H-Bridge. The circuit was designed and laid out onto a small PCB.
The H-bridge signals and electromagnet are controlled using a Tiva C microcontroller. It takes in quadrature encoder inputs, and outputs the speed & direction for the DC motor, in addition to an enable signal for the electromagnet. The final position for the crane is controlled in a feedback loop using a PID controller with the desired 'place' location being the reference input.
