Modelling the ED7220C 6 DOF robotic manipulator

Talha Zubair Khan Muhammad Taaha Jawad

Department of Mechatronics Department of Mehcatronics
Engineering Engineering
NUST CEME NUST CEME
Rawalpindi, Pakistan Rawalpindi, Pakistan
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract—This paper introduces the kinematic modelling of robots are designed to move, kinematics form a fundamental
the ED7220C robotic manipulator, manufactured by ED part of their design [3].
Corporation, Korea. This is a serial manipulator having 5
revolute joints providing 6 degrees of freedom. The forward The kinematics of any robot can be split into two
kinematic model of the robot is presented in this paper, as well main categories. The forward kinematics of a robot allow us
as a modelling implementation of the model in MATLAB. The to determine the cartesian coordinates of the tool frame with
forward kinematic model is then verified against existing respect to the base frame, given certain values for joint
literature. angles (or displacements in case of prismatic joints).
Likewise, inverse kinematics deals with determining the
Keywords—robotics, kinematics, manipulator, MATLAB required joint angles (or displacements in case of prismatic
joints) required to position the tool frame at a certain set of
I. INTRODUCTION cartesian coordinates, with respect to the base frame [4]. This
is the problem of interest in robotics, since it is very
The study of robotics is a very computationally intensive desirable to know what joint variables will result in the
discipline, with a large number of matrix multiplication desired position and velocity. This is also relatively more
operations, implicit transcendental equations, and iteration. difficult to calculate than forward kinematics, mainly due to
Thus, this makes the analysis of the forward and inverse the existence of non-unique solutions, and singularities in
kinematics of a robot quite complex, since all of the certain configurations [5]. Sahu et al [6] proposed a method
aforementioned operations take time to do by hand. based on quaternion algebra to solve the kinematic problem,
Therefore, the field of robotics has benefitted substantially whereas [7] developed the inverse kinematics of the robot
through the introduction of modern computers, which allow using transcendental functions.
computations to be performed at greater speeds and
accuracies than before. The ED7220C is a popular 6 DOF robotic
manipulator with 5 revolute joints actuated by servo motors.
One of the best software available for computing This manipulator is commonly used in teaching and research
mathematical operations such as matrices, is MATLAB. applications. In this paper, the kinematics of the ED7220C
MATLAB is inherently a programming language, which was are developed and modelled using the robotics toolbox in
written by Cleve Moler in the late seventies, and was further MATLAB.
developed and distributed by The MathWorks, Inc. Apart
from mathematical operations, MATLAB allows user written
toolboxes to be defined, and shared to users worldwide. One
such toolbox is called the Robotics Toolbox, which was
written by Dr. Peter Corke, and is one of the most important
software packages available to roboticists of today.
The Robotics Toolbox is an addon to MATLAB
which allows users to define various types of robots, and
calculate their forward and inverse kinematic models, as well
as various other parameters pertaining to their operation. It
also allows the robot to be visualized through a 3D plot.
In this paper, the robotics toolbox was used in conjunction
with MATLAB’s GUI interface to model a 6 DOF robotic
arm.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW

In the field of robotics, kinematics is defined as the
science of motion which treats the subject without regard to
the forces that cause it [2]. This is different from the
dynamics of a robot, which takes into account the forces
which cause motion. The kinematics of any robot are
important to study since they allow the visualization of the Figure 1 The ED 7220C Figure 2 The Kinematic model of
performance parameters of the robot, thereby allowing the robotic manipulator the manipulator
selection of a robot for any particular application. In
addition, from a design perspective, the kinematics of any
potential robot define its geometry and construction. Since

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 III. METHODOLOGY
Table 2 DH Parameters
A. Overview Joints(i)
Symbol
In this paper, MATLAB’s GUI development tools, along 1 2 3 4 5 6
with the Robotics Toolbox were used to model the αi-1 0 -90 0 0 -90 0
kinematics of a manipulator. The Denavit-Hartenberg ai-1 0 0 L2 L3 0 0
parameters were extracted from [8] and utilized to develop a di L1 0 0 0 0 L4
model of the robot in MATLAB and determine its forward θi θ1 θ2 -90 θ3 θ4 θ5 0
and inverse kinematics.

B. Graphical User Interface (GUI) D. Inverse Kinematics

GUIs form the basis of modern human interaction with According to [8], a series of transcendental equations
computers. Gone are the days of mainstream usage of will yield the values of the joint variables required to
command line interfaces, which have been replaced by position the manipulator in that pose, given a final pose of
colorful icons and context menus. In this regard, MATLAB the manipulator (i.e. a final transformation matrix, T). Since
has an important tool to aid in the creation of GUIs for code this manipulator is a 6 DOF manipulator, the ikine function
written using MATLAB. The tool is called GUIDE of the Serial Link class was used to determine the inverse
(Graphical User Interface Development Environment). This kinematics of the manipulator. By providing the final pose
tool was used to develop the GUI shown in Fig. 3. Edit text of the manipulator to the function, we stored the values of
boxes were used for inputting and outputting the joint the joint variables in a separate matrix, which were then
variables and cartesian coordinates, while push buttons were displayed in the GUI. Note that this method is not directly
used to determine the forward and inverse kinematics. A applicable for underactuated systems, i.e. systems in which
pair of axes were used to plot the links of the robot, and a the DOF is less than 6. In such systems, the use of a
table presented the pose of the manipulator. masking matrix, as well as the ikcon function are
recommended.
IV. RESULTS
Using the test cases in [8], we tested our GUI with those
values of joint angles. Figures 4 to 6 show the output of our
GUI. For case 1, the joint angle set of [0 0 0 0] was input
into our GUI. The final transformation matrix from [8]
yielded (155,0,825) as the cartesian coordinates, which is
verified by our GUI in Fig. 4. For case 2, the joint angle set
of [90 90 -90 -90] was input into our GUI. The final
transformation matrix from [8] yielded (0,220,760) as the
cartesian coordinates, which is verified by our GUI in Fig.
5. Finally, for case 3, the joint angle set of [0 90 90 0] was
input into the GUI. The final transformation matrix from [8]
yielded (65,0,165) as the cartesian coordinates of the
manipulator, which is verified by our model in Fig. 6.
Hence, these three cases show that our kinematic model
Figure 3 The developed GUI approaches the model proposed by [8].
C. Forward Kinematics
The code for the forward kinematics of the robot was
written in the callback function of the ‘Forward’ button.
Here, the DH parameters from [8] (shown in Table 2), and
link lengths (shown in Table 1) were used in conjunction
with the Serial Link class of the robotics toolbox, to create a
plot of the robot with joint variables set to zero. Then, to
compute the final transformation matrix from frame 0 to 6,
the method outlined in [2] was implemented. Finally, the
first three elements of the last column of this 4x4 matrix
yielded the cartesian coordinates of the manipulator. This
final transformation matrix was also displayed within the
GUI.
Table 1 Link Lengths
Joint Waist Shoulder Elbow Wrist
Symbol L1 L2 L3 L4
Link
Length, 385 220 220 155
mm
 V. CONCLUSION
The commonly used ED7220C 6 DOF robotic
manipulator has been modelled in MATLAB, and the
robotics toolbox has been used to derive its forward and
inverse kinematic models. The plotting feature of this
toolbox has been used to visually represent the robot inside
a pair of axes. Finally, the models developed here were
cross referenced against published literature to ascertain the
accuracy of the proposed models. The methods presented in
this paper may be used for the effective modelling of other
types of industrial robots.
REFERENCES
[1] P. I. Corke, "A Robotics Toolbox for Matlab," IEEE Robotics &
Automation Magazine, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 24-32, 1996.
[2] J. J. Craig, Introduction to Robotics: Mechanics and Control, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 2005.
[3] B. Siciliano, Handbook of Robotics, Springer, 2008.
[4] R. N. Jazar, Theory of Applied Robotics, Springer, 2010.
Figure 4 Forward kinematics for case 1 [5] Mark S., Seth H. and Vidyasagar M., "Robot modeling and control",
John Wiley & Sons, 2006.
[6] Sahu S., Biswal B. and Subudhi B., “A novel method for representing
robot kinematics using quaternion theory”, IEEE Conference on
Computational Intelligence, Control and Computer Vision in Robotics
& Automation, pp. 76-82, 2008.
[7] S. A. A. Muhammad Imran Ullah, "Modeling and Computed Torque
Control of a 6 Degree of Freedom Robotic Arm," in International
Conference on Robotics and Emerging Allied Technologies in
Engineering, Islamabad, 2014.
[8] R. u. I. Jamshed Iqbal, "Modeling and Analysis of a 6 DOF Robotic
Arm Manipulator," Canadian Journal on Electrical and Electronics
Engineering, vol. 3, no. 6, pp. 300-306, 2012.

Figure 5 Forward kinematics for case 2

Figure 6 Forward kinematics for case 3