Unmanned Systems: A Lab-based Robotic Arm for Grasping Phase II

ENS Pedro Hayden Salazar, Peruvian Navy

A 6 Degrees of Freedom (DOF) Leap Motion Controller (LMC) was characterized in position and accuracy for robotic arm control. Tests were conducted with linear and planer trajectories for input into the Kinova Jaco interface. The objective was to produce an intuitive and adaptive system that mimicked natural hand motion. Algorithms in C++ were produced to translate LMC Cartesian position information to the Jaco Arm reference frame. Data showed that the LMC detector was quite sensitive to human hand jitter. Post processing low pass FFT filter techniques were employed to mitigate this problem. LMC hand motion volume parameters were empirically scaled, in the Cartesian frame, to match Jaco motion operational requirements. It was determined that the LMC can be successfully used, as an input device, for Jaco robotic arm control. Robotic arm trajectory latency issues were negligible when Jaco Arm parameters for displacement trajectory rates were not violated and this was successfully managed in program code and user visual input.