Teaching Robot Kinematics for Engineering Technology Students Using a Created Three-Dimensional Robot and a Camera

Teaching robot kinematics is important to engineering technology students in the robot automation. The study can help students not only in the coordinate transformation principles from a joint to its following joint in a robot, but also in relating the coordinate systems between a robot and a machine vision system. While students can utilize math software to compute robot kinematic transformations, they have problems verifying their answers. In this paper, a three dimensional vertically articulated robot is created to help students visualize the location and orientation of the end effector. Students can check their robot kinematic answers based on the joint encoder values set up at each joint. In addition, a camera is also mounted on the robot for the students to relate an object location from the camera coordinate system to the robot world frame.