Computer-Aided Design and Simulation of a Robotic Manipulator for Educational Purposes

This work approaches (from an educational point of view) the electro-mechanical design of a robot with five degrees of freedom (5DOF). Solidworks was used for the computer-aided 3D (CAD) design of the mechanism; and Matlab (Simescape and Simscape Multibody, SMB) for the design of the electromechanical system and for the calculation of the evolution of it's state variables. It is proposed that this work approach allows students to integrate the minimum contents related to the subject “Control of Robots ”. For this, the direct and inverse kinematics of a 5GL robot were first programmed with traditional tools of the bibliography. Then we present the results of simulations of the differential equations obtained from the Lagrangian mechanics, those with results generated by the SMB in a simple mechanical system of 2DOF. Once the mechanical part was tested, SMB was used for the educational 5DOF robot design driven by servomotors and an independent PID control for each joint, showing that the robot works satisfactorily for a wide operating envelope.