An Economical Robotic Arm for Playing Chess Using Visual Servoing

Abstract

The proposed paper outlines the design of an economical robotic arm which is used to visualize the chess board and play with the opponent using visual servoing system. We have used the FaBLab RUC's mechanical design prototype proposed and have further used Solidworks software to design the 4 jointed gripper. The proposed methodology involves detecting the squares on the corners of the chessboard and further segmenting the images. This is followed by using convolutional neural networks to train and recognize the image in order to determine the movement of the chess pieces. To trace the manipulator, Kanade-Lucas-Tomasi method is used in the visual servoing system. An Arduino uses Gcode commands to interact with the robotic arm. Game Decisions are taken with the help of chess game engine the pieces on the board are moved accordingly. Thus a didactic robotic arm is developed for decision making and data processing, serving to be a good opponent in playing chess.