Trajectory Planning, Kinematics, and Experimental Validation of a 3D-Printed Delta Robot Manipulator

Abstract

This paper presents the implementation, trajectory planning, kinematics, and experimental validation of an open-source 3D-printed delta robot manipulator. The robot’s hardware consists of three servo motors, an Arduino Uno microcontroller, and a Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) servo module. The software includes a trapezoidal velocity profile planner and an inverse and forward kinematics solver to calculate the motor angles required to achieve a desired end-effector position in task space. The 3D printed parts were obtained from an open-source Thingiverse project and assembled to form the robot’s kinematic structure. The robot’s performance was evaluated in terms of its accuracy, repeatability, and maximum speed for a pick-and-place task. Experimental results show that the robot can achieve a positioning accuracy of 2.2 mm, with a top speed of 0.4 m/s, 30 picks per minute, and load carrying capacity up to 200 g. These results are satisfactory, considering the ease of assembly and the cost-effectiveness of the robot. The comparison of the calculated motor angles with actual motor angles obtained through additional potentiometer wires soldering shows promising results. The proposed robot’s cost-effective characteristics, utilization of open-source additive manufacturing, and motion planning algorithms make it suitable for various applications, including education, research, and small-scale industrial applications.