DynaTutor 5 Axis Arm Robot: with Chess Playing Software
last updated: April 22 2002
Introduction
Welcome to the Queen's University ELEC448 Chess Playing DynaTutor page. The DynaTutor is an old 1982 5-axis arm robot that was origininally designed to be an introduction to computer interfacing (in the days when the Commodore PET was king).This project aims to rebuild the hardware driver for the robot (the original board went missing), and reimplement new software drivers. Finally, the combination of the two along with some inverse kinematics will be used to create a robot that will move chess pieces.
The hardware is implemented on a prototyping board using a programmable logic device from Altera and some power drivers. The software is written in Java and employs a multithreaded mechanism to drive each motor 'concurrently'. The team members are Andrea Sommer, Stuart Day, Peter Cooney, Evelyn Melnichouk and Nasron Cheong.
You may email Nasron, Evelyn, Peter, Stuart or Andrea for further information.
Background Information
Inverse kinematics is the study of the translation between the operational coordinates of the robot's end-effector, to the robot's joint angles.
By describing a line of points in joint-space, one can interpolate between those points to travel a particular path, using a method called joint-space trajectory generation and traversal.
Using this method, along with some logic to define the locations of chess pieces, a method can be implemented to move each piece.
Documentation
All documents are in PDF or html format. Click here to get Adobe Acrobat to view them.- Final Report: The Final Report that describes everything.
- dynatutor Package API documentation: Describes the latest version of the drivers, which are used to drive the DynaTutor Through a parallel port. It depends on a parallel port class created by Juan Gabriel Del Cid Portillo. See his page at http://www.geocities.com/Juanga69/parport/. The GUI is dependent on the Swing JFC.
- Chess Logic and Kinematics API documentation: Describes the program that uses to above drivers, and implements a basic kinematic and path generation engine as well as simple data storage for chess pieces. The GUI is dependent on the Swing JFC.
Media
Videos
Click on the picture to download the MPEG-1 video. Some DivX files are also available.| Here the robot is complete. In this video, the new drivers and software are used to move a chess piece twice. DivX File |
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| In this video, the new drivers and software are used to move two chess pieces. DivX File |
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| Here Nasron is setting up the robot to travel upwards along the z-axis. The points are supplied to a testing GUI through a file, where the joint-space points were generated in Matlab using a robotics toolbox. The jittering of the robot is due to the constantly changing angles, since each stepper motor has to stop and restart every point along the way. Here, 100 points are used to travel 25 cm in the z direction. |  |
| Here DynaTutor has been set to travel in a 10cm square along the x-y plane with z approximatly 0. About 30 points are used per 'leg' of the square. The shaking again, is due to the start/stop nature of the steppers. |  |
Pictures
| The Project Hardware Deliverables. The robot is clearly visible. On the bottom from the left: The power supply, the parallel connector cable, and the encased driver |  |
| A close up of the driver itself, with arrows showing the different components. |  |
| A close up of the encased driver |  |
| Top view of the DynaTutor. The robot is seen with a large power supply, and the uncased driver board |  |
| Driver board. The board consists of several connectors, an Altera 44-pin PLD and some Darlington power drivers. The LED's show the current input from the parallel port. |  |