Robotic Arm Recommendations

[Chris_Megdanoff]

Hello all,

I was wondering if anyone on this forum would recommend any particular robotic arm model for use with LabVIEW.  We are considering purchasing a robotic arm with ~4 ft reach to scan irregular shaped objects.  If there are any particular models with LabVIEW drivers available or if someone has had a particularly good (or bad) experience with a brand, I'd appreciate hearing about it.

Chris

[jamrite]

Hi Chris,

Robotic arms are typically driven by some sort of feedback control system, like a servo/stepper motor. NI makes hardware and software to control these systems. For example, if you had an arm with four degrees of freedom, you could use one of our four axis controllers and program motion in the three dimensional space using our motion software. 

Please take a look at this presentation for the different elements of a motion control system and the various NI products that help you control it. Make sure that you look at the section on the Motion Assistant.

http://www.ni.com/swf/presentation/us/motion/

Please let me know when you have more questions.

Jaidev Amrite

National Instruments 

[_James_]

Hi Chris,

Did you get anywhere with robotic arms? We're thinking of getting one but we're just starting out with robotics and we don't know anything about what's involved in getting an arm and controlling it with LabVIEW. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

James.

[bcregger]

I have never used this device but it looks like a nice peice of gear and simple to use.  The product claims to have learning algorithms that can learn motion by simply moving the arm by hand.
http://www.neuronics.ch/cms_en/web/index.php?id=244&s=katana