UMIRobot: An Open-{Software, Hardware} Low-Cost Robotic Manipulator for Education

TL;DR

A newly developed robotics education kit and its ecosystem are presented which is used as the backbone of an online/hybrid course in teleoperated robots and a teleoperated task between Japan and Bangladesh executed by course participants is shown.

Abstract

Robot teleoperation has been studied for the past 70 years and is relevant in many contexts, such as in the handling of hazardous materials and telesurgery. The COVID19 pandemic has rekindled interest in this topic, but the existing robotic education kits fall short of being suitable for teleoperated robotic manipulator learning. In addition, the global restrictions of motion motivated large investments in online/hybrid education. In this work, a newly developed robotics education kit and its ecosystem are presented which is used as the backbone of an online/hybrid course in teleoperated robots. The students are divided into teams. Each team designs, fabricates (3D printing and assembling), and implements a control strategy for a master device and gripper. Coupling those with the UMIRobot, provided as a kit, the students compete in a teleoperation challenge. The kit is low cost (< 100USD), which allows higher-learning institutions to provide one kit per student and they can learn in a risk-free environment. As of now, 73 such kits have been assembled and sent to course participants in eight countries. As major success stories, we show an example of gripper and master designed for the proposed course. In addition, we show a teleoperated task between Japan and Bangladesh executed by course participants. Design files, videos, source code, and more information are available at https://mmmarinho.github.io/UMIRobot/

Figures (12)

• Figure 1: The fully assembled UMIRobot, other important elements of the kit, and the box used to deliver the kit.
• Figure 2: All elements contained in the kit. This listed is included in the kit so that each student can check if the kit is complete.
• Figure 3: CAD rendering of the assembled 5 DoF UMIRobot, the miniature manipulator robot newly designed in this work. Note that the fifth joint, $q_{4}$, will be attached to the student's gripper module to rotate it. A sixth servomotor (not shown in the CAD) will be used to actuate the gripper. Design files available at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4797804.
• Figure 4: Rendering of the PCB designed as part of the proposed kit. PCB design and schematics licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. It has been designed with standards compatible with low-cost PCB production services. Design files available at https://mmmarinho.github.io/UMIRobot/.
• Figure 5: A screenshot of the latest version of the UMIRobot GUI developed in this work. A user with no programming experience can easily connect to the Arduino and/or the simulator. In addition, configuration-space control is available out-of-the-box. Source files available at https://github.com/mmmarinho/umirobot-py.