International Journal of Advanced Research in Technology and Innovation

e-ISSN: 2682-8324 | Vol. 3, No. 2, 39-46, 2021

http://myjms.mohe.gov.my/index.php/ijarti

The Development of Robot Arm with Smartphone Control Using

Arduino
Michael Sillang1*, Susie Patricia1
1
Department of Electrical Engineering, Politeknik Mukah, Malaysia

*Corresponding Author: michael@pmu.edu.my

Accepted: 15 May 2021 | Published: 1 June 2021

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Abstract: In recent decades, the manufacturing sector has seen a rapid evolution. From mass
production with an intensive labour force in production lines to the use of robotics to increase
efficiency, the manufacturing industry is constantly evolving with more and more infusion of
automation. Today, the next phase of evolution is referred to as the Fourth Industrial
Revolution or Industry 4.0. This paper presents the development of a robot arm with
smartphone control using Arduino Uno. A mobile robot that functional to do pick and place
robot are one of the technologies in manufacturing industries that are designed to perform pick
and place operations and be controlled by using a smartphone via Bluetooth connection. The
development of this robot is based on the Arduino Uno platform that will be interfaced with the
wireless controller to the mobile robotic arm. This system is designed to eliminate human error
and human intervention to get more precise work. There are many fields in which human
intervention is difficult but the process under consideration must be operated and controlled
this leads to the area in which robots find their applications. Finally, this prototype of the robot
is expected to overcome the problem such as placing or picking objects that far away from the
user, pick and place a hazardous object in the fastest and easiest way.

Keywords: robot, pick and place, smartphone control

_________________________________________________________________________
1. Introduction

On October 31, 2018, International Trade and Industry Ministry (MITI) has launched the
National Policy on Industry 4.0 aimed at boosting digital transformation in the Malaysian
manufacturing sector and its related services by facilitating companies to embrace the related
technologies systematically and comprehensively. The end goal is for Malaysian
manufacturers to be stronger through smart technologies. For many years people try to replace
human workers with machines. Many companies, research centers, and universities
acknowledge that robotics and automation technology is the basis of industrial manufacturing
and an important driver for Industry 4.0. Machines called robots are faster and more effective
than people are. The term robotics is practically defined as the study, design, and use of robot
systems for manufacturing.

Robots are generally used to perform unsafe, hazardous, highly repetitive, and unpleasant tasks.
They have many different functions such as material handling, assembly, arc welding,
resistance welding, and machine tool load and unload functions, painting, and spraying. Many
elements of robots are built with inspiration from nature. The construction of the manipulator
as the arm of the robot is based on the human arm. The robot can manipulate objects such as
pick and place operations. It is also able to function by itself. The development of electronic

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 International Journal of Advanced Research in Technology and Innovation
e-ISSN: 2682-8324 | Vol. 3, No. 2, 39-46, 2021
http://myjms.mohe.gov.my/index.php/ijarti

industry robot system technology has been expanded increasingly. As one such application, the
service robot with machine vision capability has been developed recently.

In this highly developing society, time and workforce are critical constraints for the completion
of tasks on large scale. Automation is playing an important role to save human efforts in most
of the regular and frequently carried works. One of the major and most performed works is
picking and placing jobs from source to destination. The pick and place mechanical arm is a
human-controlled based system that detects the object picks that object from the source location
and places it at the desired location. For the detection of objects, humans detect the presence
of objects and move machines accordingly. With the rapid increase in the flow of information,
people are now guided to search for different markets and people have entered the competition
to manufacture quality products cheaply.

The robotic arm is made of an Android phone or tablet control; it can carry the desired material,
mix it up, and perform the commands previously determined by a user. If this project is also a
designated task; the robotic arm takes a piece of material and brings it to the desired position
and then records its movements and lets it do the same action until we stop it. The servomotor
is preferred to be able to perform these operations properly since the motor to be selected must
operate precisely and must be at high torque. The robot arm shows in Figure 1 is composed of
5 servo motors and can move in 4 axis directions with these motors.

Figure 1: Robot Arm

2. Literature Review

Industry 4.0 is a new area where the Internet of things alongside cyber-physical systems
interconnect in a way where the combination of software, sensor, processor, and
communication technology plays a huge role in making “things” to have the potential to feed
information into it and eventually adds value to manufacturing processes. (Mohd Aiman et al.,
2016). Today technology is developing in the same direction in line with rapidly increasing
human needs. The work done to meet these needs makes life easier every day, and these studies
are concentrated on robotic arm studies. (Rajashekar K et al., 2020).

Recently, designing a robot along with a navigation-computing platform is not a problem

anymore. In robotics, navigation refers to the way a robot finds its way into the environment
and is a common requirement for almost any mobile robot. (G. N. Coelho, 2008). “Today's

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 International Journal of Advanced Research in Technology and Innovation
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smartphone is already equipped with multiple built-in sensors for navigation purposes like
accelerometer, gyroscope, camera, GPS, and Wi-Fi transceiver plus most of them embedded
with fast processors. (W.-W. Kao and B. Q. Huy, 2013). The designers have wide options to
choose any built-in sensors to create the navigation platform of their robots. It is like using the
smartphone as a “brain” for the robots. (R. V Aroca et al., 2012).

In this project, by using an android application, the robots could be controlled with a Bluetooth
device, interfaced to the control unit on the robot for sensing the signals transmitted by the
android application in the wide range area. Normal practice for the past few years ago, robots
are controlled by using RF circuits, which have several limitations like working range,
frequency range, and control range. These limitations could be vanished by using smartphones
for robotic control, it has more advantages like robust control, large working range coverage
and the biggest advantage is long-lasting controlled. (Nik Firdaus, 2015). For comparison, from
the definition; “Wi-Fi is a cheap solution aimed to cover short distances such as airport, hotels,
and conference areas”. From this, Wi-Fi has some limitations in providing a wide coverage
solution, while the Infrared, WLAN, and Bluetooth technology only able to remote some
equipment in the coverage less than Wi-Fi. (S. Tang, 2011).

The pick and place robot being implemented to ease the process of sorting, the process of
moving heavy materials, etc. Usually, the transfer process of the heavy materials is being
carried out, using manpower and if the transfer process is repeated for a while, it can cause
injuries to the operator. By using the robot, the operator will no longer have to bend and lift
heavy loads thus preventing injuries and increasing the efficiency of the work. An operator will
make mistakes whether small or big in a while. In the industrial world, the industry cannot
afford to take any kind of mistake. As every mistake is costly whether interns of time, money,
and material. (Harish K et al., 2017)

3. Methodology

This project has been planned in three major different stages to understand each stage carefully
and to complete the project in time. Figure 2 below shows the stages design of project
development.

Electronic
Mechanical circuit design Computer
Design and hardware programming
selection

Figure 2: Stages design of project development

3.1 Mechanical Design

The first task in mechanical design is to create a computer-aided product. An initial design was
built with the help of Solid works 3D modelling software and the arm has 5 degrees of freedom
that gives the shape of a robotic arm in a virtual environment. For the first 3 axis, the waist, the
shoulder, and the elbow are used the MG996R servos, and for the other 2 axis, the wrist roll
and wrist pitch, as well as the gripper used the smaller SG90 micro servos. Figure 3 and Figure
4 show the side view and front view of this project.

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e-ISSN: 2682-8324 | Vol. 3, No. 2, 39-46, 2021
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Figure 3: Side view

Figure 4: Front view

3.2 Electronic Circuit Design and Hardware Selection

3.2.1 Arduino UNO
Although microcontroller type PIC is usually used in programming and software fields,
Arduino Uno is an open-source microcontroller word based on the microchip ATmega328P
microcontroller and developed by Arduino. cc. The board is equipped with sets of digital and
analog input/output pins that may be interfaced to various expansion boards and other circuits.
Processing is written for non-programming users. Arduino wiring is produced based on the
programming language. Figure 5 shows the Arduino Uno R3 is used in this project.

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 International Journal of Advanced Research in Technology and Innovation
e-ISSN: 2682-8324 | Vol. 3, No. 2, 39-46, 2021
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Figure 5: Arduino Uno R3

3.2.2 Servo Motors

The next hardware that is a drive system of a robotic arm is a servomotor. They are small but
pack a big punch and are very energy efficient. Servo motors operate from 4.8V to 6.5V, the
higher the voltage higher the torque we can achieve, but most commonly they are operated at
+5V. Figure 6 below shows the SG90 micro servo and MG996R servo motor that had been
used for this project.

Figure 6: SG90 micro servo and MG996R servo motor

3.2.3 HC-05 Bluetooth

This module is used to communicate between two microcontrollers like Arduino or
communicate with any device via Bluetooth. This module communicates with the help of
USART at 9600 baud rates. The HC-05 that show in Figure 7 has two operating modes, 1 is
the data mode in which it can send and receive data from other Bluetooth devices and the other
is AT command mode where the default device setting can be changed.

Figure 7: HC-05 Bluetooth

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3.3 Computer Programming

3.3.1 Arduino Software
Arduino Software is free software that can be downloaded on http://arduino.cc/. The
requirement for the installation is low, so any computer can install it and use it. The Arduino
has its development environment which contains a text editor for writing code, a message area,
a text console, a toolbar with buttons for common functions, and a series of menus. It connects
to the Arduino hardware to upload programs and communicate with them.
3.3.2 Smartphone Controller Software
The original Robot Arm control app was using sliders for controlling the positions of the
servos. The app is using the MIT App Inventor online application. At the top, we have two
buttons for connecting the smartphone to the HC-05 Bluetooth module. Then on the left side,
we have an image of the robot arm, and on the right side, we have the six sliders for controlling
the servos and one slider for the speed control. Each slider has a different initial, minimum and
maximum value that suits the robot arm joints. At the bottom of the app, we have three buttons,
SAVE, RUN, and RESET through which we can program the robot arm to run automatically.
There is also a label below which shows the number of steps we have saved. Figure 8 below
shows the smartphone software layout.

Figure 8: Smartphone Software Layout

4. Discussion and Result

4.1 Circuit Connection

Arduino board and an HC-05 Bluetooth module for communication with the smartphone. The
control pins of the six servo motors are connected to six digital pins of the Arduino board.
Figure 9 shows the connection of the main circuit of the Robot Arm, by using Arduino UNO
as the Microcontroller, the HC-05 Bluetooth Device act as the communication medium for the

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Smartphone and the Robot. Six servo motor used includes three MG996R Servo Motor and
three of the SG90 Micro Servo Motor to control the angles of the Robot Arm. For powering
the servos, we need 5V, but this must come from an external power source because the Arduino
is not able to handle the amount of current that all of them can draw. The power source must
be able to handle at least 2A of current.

Figure 9: Circuit connection

5. Conclusion

Overall, the objectives of this project have been achieved which are developing the hardware
and software for wireless mobile robotic arm, implementing the pick and place system
operation and testing the robot that meets the criteria of purpose project. From the analysis that
has been made, it is clearly shows that its movement is precise, accurate, and easy to control
and user friendly. The mobile robot has been developed successfully as the movement of the
robot including mobile and arm robot can be controlled wirelessly. This robot is expected to
overcome the problem such as placing or picking object that away from the user, pick and place
hazardous object in the fastest and easiest way. The development of this system has wide area
of applications such as in industry, as Malaysia is chasing the Industry Revolution 4.0.

References

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