In this project pupils build and program a Robotic Arm and Claw. The project is a fully working programmable model of an industrial 3-DOF robot - a type widely used in the auto and other industries. ‘DOF’ means 'Degree of Freedom' as it relates to a robotic arm, that is, an independent joint that can provide freedom of movement for the manipulator, either in a rotational or translational sense. The ‘3’ refers to the robot arm having three joints to imitate the movement of a human upper arm.
For the model our pupils build, the arm has a gripper on the end, is mounted on a base station and is powered by multiple servo-motors. Two joysticks need to be fitted to the station to control the arm and the heart of the controller is based on an ESP8266 microchip. Pupils build the mechanics of the robot, study the robotics development pipeline and learn how to program in the Arduino C programming language that makes the robot operate.