Raise Robotics Internship
Skills: Python, C++, ROS, GitHub
During my internship at Raise Robotics, I successfully completed the following projects in my three months at the company.
Concrete Printing Tool
First, I worked on the development of a new robot feature - concrete line printing using a portable inkjet printer attached to the wrist of the robot arm. I did research on many different inkjet printers, taking into account important specifications like price, weight, power requirements and communication protocols. After purchasing the printer, I designed and 3D printed a mount for the printer to allow it to be mounted onto a UR robot arm. I then integrated the printer with a UR5e robot arm so the command to draw lines could be triggered from the computer via the RS485 interface.
The video below shows inkjet printer working with the UR5e robot arm to draw two perpendicular lines.
Inverse Reachability Tool
I also helped in the development of an inverse reachability tool for the robot that could provide valuable insights into purchase and design decisions. For this task, I had to improve on the existing inverse reachability tool by allowing certain parameters like the poses of the two robot arms, the range of positions and orientations to be tested to be modified easily using a YAML file. This project involved picking up a lot of new skills including learning to navigate the ROS workspace, programming in C++, and learning to process the results of each inverse reachability test so that it is easily comprehensible.
The images below show some of the results of the inverse reachability test for the robot arms mounted upright and horizontally. The green points represent positions that the robot arms can reach. Yellow points represent positions that the arm can reach, but only at certain orientations. Red points represent points that the arms cannot reach at all.
Channel Clearing Tool
Lastly, I worked on integrating a channel clearing tool that was designed and fabricated by another intern with the UR robot arm. The channel clearing tool made use of two stepper motors attached to two cork screws. I mapped the control of the motors, as well as the movement of the arm to the joysticks and buttons on the PlayStation controller, allowing the tool to be operated wirelessly.
The video below shows the tool working together with the arm.