Building of Inmoov Robotic Arm For Performing Various Operations
Building of Inmoov Robotic Arm For Performing Various Operations
https://doi.org/10.22214/ijraset.2022.39804
International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering Technology (IJRASET)
ISSN: 2321-9653; IC Value: 45.98; SJ Impact Factor: 7.538
Volume 10 Issue I Jan 2022- Available at www.ijraset.com
Abstract: ‘Automation is the key in reducing the repetitive and banal tasks of everyday life’, the oft-quoted aphorism best
portrays our effort at making a humanoid hand for tasks that require dexterity of fingers in situations where time and effort are
of importance. The cost of human labor, quality of processes or products, time, and safety make this project a need of the hour.
The research paper showcases our efforts of making a humanoid robotic arm. The body of the arm is composed of 3D printed
parts. Servo Motors with nylon strings were used to control the fingers and the wrist. InMoov Nervo Board was used to control
the servos. Worm Gear Mechanism was implemented to control the bicep movement and Worm Wheel is used for shoulder
rotation. Machines can perform a wide range of functions without a considerable amount of human intervention. The future
scope of Robotics and Automation would be to make a diverse and positive impact in industrial as well as research applications.
Keywords: 3D Print, Build Challenges, Electronics, Humanoid, Inmoov, MyRobotLab, Robotic Arm, Robotics
I. INTRODUCTION
The hand is surely the most useful tool that humanity has been blessed with by nature. It can skillfully deal with even the most
tedious of tasks that most machines would fail at. Over decades, there have been immense advances in technology that have paved
the way to make robot arms that mimic the motion of a human hand. The arm we built focuses on efficiently carrying out all the
tasks that a human arm can.
InMoov is an open-source life-size humanoid robot. We have used the InMoov robotic arm for this project because of it’s free to use
license, customizability and the plenty of functional APIs available. It is also a cheaper option compared to the other robotic arms.[1]
The Inmov robotic hand controls 16 joints in the fingers(5 DOFs) using 0.7 mm nylon strings with 6 actuators(servo motors) which
makes it great for grasping gestures.[7] This gives the robotic arm similar freedom to a human arm which is the most prominent
objective, given the kind of applications that it will be serving.
The API’s we use to program the arm for different applications are from MyRobotLab (MRL), an open source software developed
by many volunteers. It makes working with Arduino, servos, cameras and other hardware easier than writing all the code from
scratch.
Humanoid robotic arms are the most complex yet the most useful component in life-size humanoid robots. As can be imagined, they
serve a wide array of applications, ranging from the simplest task a human arm can perform- picking and placing an object, to the
most complex tasks like writing or typing. [3, 8]
A. Electronic Components
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International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering Technology (IJRASET)
ISSN: 2321-9653; IC Value: 45.98; SJ Impact Factor: 7.538
Volume 10 Issue I Jan 2022- Available at www.ijraset.com
1) Servo motors(Fig 1): We use 6 MG996R servo motors in the forearm. 5 for finger actuation with the help of nylon strings and 1
for wrist actuation with the help of gears. The servo motors used for finger actuation rest inside a “servo bed” which is present
in the forearm. They are used to control finger movement(one motor for each finger). The nylon strings connected to the fingers
are strapped to the servo pulley at the top of the respective servo motors which are then programmed using Arduino to rotate at
given angles, hence causing tension in the nylon strings attached to the fingers and the wrist, ultimately leading to finger and
wrist movements.
2) We use 4 FT5335M servo motors in the upper arm for shoulder actuation. 1 servo motor is present in the bicep, which is used
for the “bicep curling” action. The other 3 servo motors that are present above the bicep are used for “rotation”, “lateral” and
“arm lifting” movements respectively.
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International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering Technology (IJRASET)
ISSN: 2321-9653; IC Value: 45.98; SJ Impact Factor: 7.538
Volume 10 Issue I Jan 2022- Available at www.ijraset.com
3) Arduino board(Fig 2): We have used the Arduino Mega 2560, whichis a high performance, low power 8-bit microcontroller
board based on the ATmega2560. It has 54 digital input/output pins (of which 15 can be used as PWM outputs), a USB
connection, a power jack, a 16 MHz crystal oscillator, 16 analog inputs, 4 UARTs (hardware serial ports), an ICSP header, and
a reset button. It features 4kb (4096 bytes) of non volatile electrically erasable programmable read-only memory.
4) Inmoov Nervo board(Fig 3): We use the Inmoov Nervo Board to connect all of the servo motors to the power supply and to the
Arduino board in order to program them.
5) Battery(Fig 4): We use a 12V battery to power the bicep and the shoulder. Also, we use a 12V battery with a step down buck
converter to power the forearm with 5 Volts. The operating voltage of the bicep and shoulder is 12 Volts and that of the forearm
is 5-6 Volts.
6) Battery Connectors(XT60 connectors)(Fig 5): We use 2 XT60 connectors for the Nervo to power servo motors with different
voltages.
7) Potentiometer(Fig 6): We use 3 potentiometers in the bicep/shoulder region, to read the position of each motor which
corresponds to different motions of the arm. Since the potentiometer top will rotate with the arm body, it will measure the
voltage across different positions of the arm, we will be able to determine the current position in terms of degrees from the
different voltage values.
8) USB connector(Fig 7): We use this to connect the Arduino board to the laptop to program the arm.
9) Wire Connectors(Fig 8): We use F to F wire connectors to connect the servos to the Inmoov Nervo board.
B. 3D printed parts
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International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering Technology (IJRASET)
ISSN: 2321-9653; IC Value: 45.98; SJ Impact Factor: 7.538
Volume 10 Issue I Jan 2022- Available at www.ijraset.com
©IJRASET: All Rights are Reserved | SJ Impact Factor 7.538 | ISRA Journal Impact Factor 7.894 | 208
International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering Technology (IJRASET)
ISSN: 2321-9653; IC Value: 45.98; SJ Impact Factor: 7.538
Volume 10 Issue I Jan 2022- Available at www.ijraset.com
1) Basic Assembly: The main aim in the hand was routing the nylon thread for the fingers through the entire body of the hand.
They must be routed through from the servo motor pulley wheel to the cable rob (Fig 11), passing through the string tensioner
and then passing through the rotwrist1(Fig 12) via the cable holder wrist (Fig 13). The threads exit the forearm through the
BigGear (Fig 14) towards the palm. After threading the lines through each of the palms' respective holes for each finger(Fig
15),one must thread them through the finger- each side of the thread passes through different ends of the finger's pulleys (Fig
16). Then we return the thread in the opposite direction, tying to it the pulley, keeping the string taut.
2) Challenges : The main challenges we faced in this process were passing the threads correctly through the forearm without
inverting them as it would cause the fingers to move in the opposite direction. Often the brittle 3D printed parts would crack
due to even the slightest pressure. A significant effort went into making sure the 3D parts would fit each other perfectly - the
main culprit being the forearm outer body with it’s curved shape. Often the motors hindered the arm body from closing,
requiring us to file the inside curve of the forearm body panel, also screwing the servo top pulley deep into the servo motor with
a drill machine on low speed just to meet the height requirement for the forearm body. Additionally, the power requirement for
motors required a step down board with decent headroom for the max amperage of all 5 active fingers. Acquiring electronic
components such as motors were challenging during the peak of the pandemic.
B. Arm (Bicep)
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International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering Technology (IJRASET)
ISSN: 2321-9653; IC Value: 45.98; SJ Impact Factor: 7.538
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1) Basic Assembly: The upper arm assembly starts by attaching supports HighArmSide and LowArmSide (Fig 18) to the base
RotMitV2 (Fig 19). This base then gets attached over the RotGearV6 (Fig 20) that works in a worm wheel pulley configuration
to allow for rotation and lateral movement with the shoulder attachment. The bicep then gets attached via the forearm and
through the pistonBaseAntiClock (Fig 21) with the pistonAntiClock (Fig 22) attached to its head. This piston passes through
the hollow portion of RotMit base when the bicep is curled completely. To note the positions of the 3d printed arm we modify
the shoulder and bicep servos, starting by opening up the servos and desoldering the potentiometers. The potentiometer wires
are then extended out of the body of the servo and extended to the PLA divot in the arm body where it is to be re-attached with
the potentiometers (Fig [18,19]).
2) Challenges: Here the biggest issue by far was the fitment of the panels. We often had to hammer down on the 3D printed parts,
which is obviously not advisable, considering the strength of the printed parts. The 3D printed spiral gears and bolts were also a
huge challenge in 3D printing. They didn’t always fit well, requiring us to carefully file only particular parts of the gears to
allow the best fit and not loosen the gear elsewhere. Fitting the ball bearings into the shoulder plate was another challenge in
itself. They were a requirement for the gears but if they weren’t aligned as needed, they would cause the ball bearings to vibrate
and fall out. In the end we had to reprint the whole worm wheel gear. The motors were very powerful, and the slightest bit of
incorrect movement broke parts and solder, especially the bicep pot solder. Also if the potentiometer was incorrectly placed it
would limit movement of the arm. Depending on the availability modifying certain stl files to allow different motors to be
placed was another limitation (covid caused motor accessibility issues) but the open source concept allowed for easy editing.
Some other issues that we faced were the glitches in the MyRobotLab and voice commands only working on Chrome browser.
[3]
IV. LIMITATIONS
As there are many possible advantages and applications of a humanoid robot arm, they come with quite a few limitations. Although
there are certain applications like prosthetics that exclusively require humanoid robotic arms, there are a wide range of simple
applications which don’t necessarily need them. Consider, for instance, a robot arm whose ONLY purpose is to pick and place
packages. This arm need not have five human-like fingers to get the job done as developing it would be needlessly expensive, a
better focus would be the weight capacity that the robot can handle for such a purpose.
Humanoid robotic arms are known and meant to do complex tasks, which in itself speaks for how complex the design and hardware
of them can be. A lot of joints and belts/strings are used for the actuation of the fingers and arms. These components, if used for
stressful applications (weight/tension/pressure) can often be points to failure in the system. Humanoid arms have several more such
complicated points of failure than specific-for-task bots. The maintenance and replacement of any of these crucial components
inside the arm is very complex and time-consuming. Since all parts of our arm happen to be so interconnected, every time a tiny
string/belt, servo or a 3D printed part needs to be fixed or replaced, a large part of the arm might need to be opened up and adjusted
because of the new fittings.
Since our arm is entirely 3D printed, it doesn’t have the strength to withhold more than 5 KGs of weight. Hence applications that
involve dealing with objects having weights larger than the mentioned amount are not possible with the arm. Also, the fingers used
in the arm are flooded with various strings connected to their respective servos, this is a very crucial yet vulnerable part of the arm
as the fingers are entirely made up of several small 3D printed components. In case of very high tension in the nylon strings
actuating the fingers may break, replacing which is a highly time consuming task as one has to run the new string throughout the
entire forearm body. Additionally under stress the tiny 3D printed finger parts are at a risk of breakage, printing these parts again to
fix the arm can be quite costly.
V. RELATED WORK
There have been several applications of humanoid robotic arms in various industries, majorly in prosthetics. Some of the related
works that are relevant or similar to our goal, along with their purpose and conclusion are listed below.
A. An Open Source 3D printed robot with a Parallel Spherical Joint Wrist for Sign Languages Reproduction
A 3D-printable dexterous anthropomorphic robotic hand was specifically designed to reproduce Sign Languages’ hand poses for
deaf and deaf-blind users. The InMoov hand was improved, enhancing dexterity by adding adduction DOFs of three fingers (thumb,
index and middle fingers) and a 3 DOF parallel spherical joint wrist. Systematic kinematic analysis was provided and it was done
using the PARLOMA project’s framework which aims at developing a telecommunication system for deaf-blind people, by
enabling transmission of hand signs from Sign Languages. [3, 4, 8]
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International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering Technology (IJRASET)
ISSN: 2321-9653; IC Value: 45.98; SJ Impact Factor: 7.538
Volume 10 Issue I Jan 2022- Available at www.ijraset.com
C. Grasping Ability and Motion Synergies in Affordable Tendon-Driven Prosthetic Hands Controlled by Able-Bodied Subjects
This was a study on making low cost 3D printed humanoid arms assess the functionality and motion synergies of different tendon-
driven hands using an able-bodied adaptor. The use of this adaptor makes it possible to take advantage of the human brain control
while being able to obtain the synergies directly from the robotic hand. In this project, four artificial hands - InMoov, IMMA,
Dextrus v2.0, Limbitless were used to tackle the Anthropomorphic Hand Assessment Protocol, quantifying the functionality and the
ability for human-like grasping. This project showed that the authors were able to study how the different factors in the humanoid
robotic arm like friction coefficient of the hand contact surfaces, limitations on the underactuation, and impairments for a correct
thumb opposition affect the grasping motion and that they need to be improved.[5]
VII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to extend our gratitude to Asst Prof. Sanjesh Pawale for his guidance and his valuable and constructive suggestions
during the course of this project. We would also like to thank Asst Prof. Noshir Tarapore for his assistance in keeping our project on
schedule.We would like to express great appreciation towards our dear friend Idris Presswala for his contribution in the making of
the base of the arm. We would like to offer special thanks to Priyanshu Parekh for lending us his 3D printer and saving us the time
and money for printing the components of the arm. Lastly, we would like to thank the Design department of Vishwakarma
University for enabling us to visit and use their lab.
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International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering Technology (IJRASET)
ISSN: 2321-9653; IC Value: 45.98; SJ Impact Factor: 7.538
Volume 10 Issue I Jan 2022- Available at www.ijraset.com
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