Initial Concept Design

In order to meet the goal of the project which requires a robotic arm; this will be build from an aid Lego Mindstorms NXT kit. The PAS (Product Architecture Schematic) needs to be defined before the system is configured. In order to layout the process for the conceptual design, team is following the initial PAS provided below with the system tree for the Robot Arm and Servo mechanism  respectively. The team is considering the concept of 3 link structure mechanisms which will be operated by the servo motors included in the NXT kit. Another idea which is considered is to add rollers at the bottom of the arm, allowing it to move sideways to adjust for the location of the object and the pocket providing one arm is always horizontally extended of the arm. A detailed analysis is still being processed for both the concepts; which once completed can provide an outlook upon the functionality and response of the robot arm. The DOF (Degree Of Freedom) will be determined and based on that the system will be defined as closed chain or an open chain. The team is currently working on defining the constraints for the members of the robot arm, i.e. the angle of rotation for the arms as the complete rotation of all arms won’t be possible based on the connections between the links.