The inclusion of a fully functional teaching pendant makes this robotic arm project truly stand out. The maker created a complex six degree of freedom robotic arm plus a control unit completely from scratch. The entire build is controlled by Raspberry Pi Pico W boards communicating wirelessly via micro-ROS over WiFi UDP.
The physical construction features a white 3D-printed body and a black handheld unit. The pendant contains a Pico W and a Pimoroni Display Pack 2.0, which offers a 320x240 IPS screen and four tactile edge buttons. An analog thumb joystick with an integrated center push button is also part of the pendant controls. The arm itself utilizes a Kitronik Simply Servos board that supports eight channels up to 10 A. Black braided wire sleeves guide the servo cabling through the arm shells.
Operation includes three modes: Teaching, Memory, and Execution. In Teaching Mode, vertical joystick movement selects a joint while horizontal movement drives it. The server unit, which runs Ubuntu 24.04 and ROS 2 Jazzy, is a Raspberry Pi 5 featuring an active cooler and an M.2 NVMe SSD expansion board. The end effector is a two-finger parallel gripper driven by a blue micro servo.
It remains unanswered whether the design is fully original or if it is based on a kit. The complexity of integrating ROS agents with a separate server unit instead of using a single onboard Pi 5 is another open question regarding the build's structure.
Project by Try Edge Tech. Watch it on their YouTube channel: