Design of Mechanical Arm for Laser Weeding Robot

Abstract:

A design of mechanical arm for laser weeding robot is described. The long term objective of the project is the replacement of chemical weeding by laser weeding. The distinguishing feature of this design is the use of a mechanical arm, which is equipped with a laser generator and a control center consisted of a single chip microcomputer and two driver hybrid ICs. The mechanical arm comprises two stepping motors vertically linked together. The robot moves ahead one step, the working area of laser generator is divided into 10×10 grids. Through the inverse operation of mechanical arm, the motor displacement angle of each grid is calculated. Mechanical arm turns to designated position if single chip gets weeds position information. The result of the design is a key executive mechanism of laser weeding. The operation error of mechanical arm is analyzed. The arm can point the laser beam towards the target weeds with small error. After the order of the execution areas is optimized, the length of arm moving path is shorter. Analysis of the running track shows that the sequence of execution area is feasible and reasonable.

• Periodical: Applied Mechanics and Materials (Volumes 347-350)
• Pages: 834-838
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.347-350.834
• Online since: August 2013
• Authors: Zhen Yang Ge, Wang Wang Wu, Ying Jie Yu, Rui Qing Zhang
• Keywords: Laser, Mechanical Arm, Single-Chip Microcomputer (SCM), Weeding

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