Projeto e implementação de um sistema de geração de trajetórias para o robô Handler da UTFPR

Abstract

This work consists in the design and implementation of a trajectory generation system and an human-machine interaction application for a five degrees of freedom robot manipulator owned by Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná. This robot, dubbed Handler, has been in UTFPR for many years and for some time remained in disuse. In recent years, it participated in a meticulous retrofitting work done by students of the Industrial Automation Technology Degree Program, which implemented the control of individual stepper motors using programmable logic controllers (PLC) fast digital input/output ports. In this new stage, the project dealt with a mathematical model that lead to the robot's direct kinematics and inverse kinematics solution. The PLCs have been replaced by the timing and digital I/O board NI PCI-6601 manufactured by National Instruments, installed on a computer running the LabVIEW® RT real-time operating system. This system is suitable for time-critical processes like stepper motor driving as it ensures the execution of tasks deterministically. A master computer runs a control application developed in LabVIEW® with a graphical user interface, through which the user can observe and simulate the robot motion with the assistance of a three-dimensional model, as well as record sequences of points and control it remotely via the Ethernet protocol, monitoring several relevant data. Now Handler has a kinematic algorithm and a high-performance hardware, so it can process, store and run more sophisticated movements. The application, developed meeting software engineering design patterns, enables the reintegration of the robot in classes as a new tool for teaching robotics at the university.