Design of a Gesture Controlled Mobile Robotic Arm

This paper presents a new and an effective sensing and actuating approach to control a mobile robotic arm using gestures and body postures. This makes human-machine interaction and sensing more receptive and intuitive for the user. Programming robots to perform human-like tasks can be hard and time consuming. However, controlling a robot by gestures and body postures is a simple method that offers a simpler and direct approach to perform these human-like tasks. Therefore, the overall goal of this paper is to design and implement a mobile robotic arm that is commanded by human gestures, which are captured by a skeletal motion sensing device and processed through a digital controller to manage the movement of the mobile robotic arm. A complete system with integrated hardware and software subsystems were designed, constructed, and tested.