CheapBot Robotic Arm

I've started testing a robotic arm for my line of CheapBot robots. It's easy to make an arm raise and lower, but I've had difficulty designing an end effector for it. It has to be light weight and reliable. After reading about the wire snare used on the Space Shuttle robotic arm, I decided to give it a try for the CheapBot robotic arm. The arm prototype is attached to my CheapBot test bed in the image below.

You can see a lever switch attached to the nose of the arm. That's so the robot can detect that it has picked up an object

In the snare test video above, you can see the piano wire snare extend, the arm drop, the snare retract, and the arm raise with the toy jack.

Look for one or more arm kits (I'm working on a second design), a radio, and smart beacon kit early next year.

May all your holidays be robotic.